#this is not a complaint it's just an observation based on my personal taste and build up of expectations

[esteemed-excellency]

Ok I finished the eel story, it was fun! I really liked all the marine descriptions in the middle and the love story at the end (and the kraken). Also I love that in Fallen London you can eat an eel that went through ego death. Normal nutritious meal 👍

[oacest]

hi scholars, i'm sorry this is not a fun topic. the new r*ssell brand news got me thinking. apart from a few exceptions, why does noel have such horrible taste in male friends, and has it been always like this? since when he started hanging out with those creepy male comedians? is he friends with them because he’s just a poor judge of character or is there more to that? what do you think?

noel was also friends with johnny d*pp but i believe he was more like his (and meg's) bestie’s bf rather than his friend. i’m sure he doesn’t talk to brand anymore but it’s so baffling to me that they're the people he willingly associate(d) himself with. maybe i’m biased but noel doesn’t have the creepy vibes his mates have and looks out of place to me when he's with them. i've listened to one of the matt morgan podcast episodes where noel mentioned some of the comedians he liked and all of them turned out to be cancelled it’s not even funny. so i guess they have similar sense of humor and morals...even though I don’t like to pick sides, i think liam is 100% justified for slagging off his brother’s circle of friends.

i'm sorry to say that cancel culture is not a realistic way to engage with or make meaningful observations about human behaviour! unless you live in a deeply asocial manner (and even then...), it's not possible to get through life without knowing, befriending, or even loving and being intimate with a wide array of people who do terrible things. pretending otherwise isn't healthy or constructive. for better or worse, noel is a man (supposedly) who was born and enculturated in the 60s in a very particular socioeconomic circumstance, and then moved on to a very different socioeconomic circumstance, both of which are.. shall we say.. Known to be hotbeds of all kinds of wretched activities and ideologies. if anything, we should be astonished he's as conscientious as he is. by which i don't mean we should fall down in gratitude at his feet for sometimes being respectful of others lmao, only that we need to think holistically about how people's lived experiences inform them. by definition he understands the world differently than an online american 19yo in the year 2025. he's not choosing his friends or who he finds funny by applying the same metrics you might. the man (in)famously was delighted to hobknob with tony blair ffs lmao, be real.

otoh, while he maybe doesn't use the wording that people in leftist spaces these days like, to his credit he has repeatedly and consistently over the years been quite forthright in condemning misogyny and racism as he understands them, and seems generally to do his best to act in accordance with those beliefs.

but he's a famous rich white guy who hangs out with other famous rich white guys, and shares a lot of the same ideas and beliefs! odds are very good a high percentage of that demographic is going to end up being sketchy. (although for what it's worth he'd already distanced himself from russell brand years ago due to prior instances of shitty behaviour.) no one can accuse noel gallagher in particular of being performative about his opinions and choices lol, he's an idiot in a lot of ways, but this urge to make celebrities virtue signal harder than anyone else due to their "platform" is pointless at best, and i would say downright dangerous in general. i know you've sent this ask in perfectly good faith and im not trying to preach or wag my finger, but i can tell you that the instinct to hang your hopes and emotions on a celebrity you like behaving to your particular specifications is asking for disappointment at the very least. he can like whatever shitty comedians he likes, it's not our business or responsibility to approve or disapprove of that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(and for the record there is no world in which liam is LESS sexist than noel or somehow more "woke" lol, all his complaints about noel's friends are based on personal jealousies and agendas and have nothing to do with moral superiority.)

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite History Books || Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France by Tracy Adams ★★★★☆

The feud between the Orleanists, or Armagnacs, and Burgundians, that “sickness that so tears through the land” brought on by mad King Charles VI’s inability to reign, is a central theme in Christine de Pizan’s corpus. An observer of the strife, Christine laments the conflict’s devastating material effects on her society throughout her career.

And yet her literary engagement with the feud, her use of “literature as a potent social mediator” to influence the course of the conflict, has received little attention. Although scholars acknowledge Christine de Pizan as one of a group of fifteenth-century political writers to treat “immediate reality and, consequently, what one can call contemporary history,” attention to date has focused more on what she said about women, authorship, and authority, and, in the abstract, kingship, peace, and warfare, than on how she sought to influence her immediate political situation. Scholars who have considered her engagement with contemporary politics have relied heavily on superseded histories, creating a confused narrative of her political loyalties and goals. The poet is depicted as politically neutral (“Christine de Pisan hated factions and had no sympathy for partisan politics”) and/or fickle, switching sides from the Orleanists to the Burgundians and back again. No one disputes that by the second decade of the fifteenth century she was an ardent Armagnac, as the Orleanists were called after 1410, fleeing Paris along with fellow Armagnacs fortunate enough to escape the Burgundian massacre of 1418, and celebrating the triumph of the Armagnac leader King Charles VII in the 1429 Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc . But many scholars place her in the Burgundian camp before this, after a still earlier flirtation with the Orleanists. This narrative has her soliciting the patronage of the brother of the mad king, Louis, Duke of Orleans, regent during the king’s episodes of insanity, but, irritated by a slight (Louis is supposed to have refused to find a place for her son in his household) and disillusioned with his profligacy, she abandons him to become a discreet propagandist for the king’s uncle, Philippe of Burgundy. Although some believe that she was less enthusiastic about Philip’s successor, the notion that after Jean sans Peur (the Fearless) succeeded his father as Duke of Burgundy in 1404, Christine remained in her “secure seat in the Burgundian camp” as a “paid Burgundian propagandist” continues to hold force. The most widely read biography of the poet in English reports the presumed shifts of allegiance without comment, slipping in the space of one paragraph from “Christine had enjoyed the patronage of two dukes of Burgundy,” to “her son was now one of the dauphin’s [the future Charles VII’s] secretaries,” to Christine’s ��family was fortunate to escape [the Burgundian massacre] with their lives.”

The incoherence results from a narrative of political activity at Charles VI’s court developed by historians influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution, a narrative itself derived from Burgundian propaganda circulated after Jean of Burgundy’s assassination of the Duke of Orleans in 1407. Republicans like Louise de Kéralio uncritically adopted Burgundian images of the king’s brother and the queen as greedy wastrels, and that of the dukes of Burgundy as men of the people. In her 1791 diatribe on the queens of France, Kéralio paints Queen Isabeau as an early Marie Antoinette and Louis as the Count of Artois. This narrative passed into the works of nineteenth century historians: Michelet, Guizot, Martin, Coville, and Thibault reinforced the pair’s negative reputation. True, monarchist historians viewed Louis positively (although they were less favorable toward Isabeau), but they were few in number compared to their Republican counterparts.

The 1838 essay by Raimond Thomassy, an early scholar of Christine’s political thought, manifests these Burgundian biases. Thomassy writes of Louis of Orleans that, “as brother of the king, he claimed to be invested with principal authority to govern during the illness of Charles VI,” as if the duke had no legitimate claim to regency. Moreover, Thomassy asserts that Louis “destroyed the people with exactions, dilapidated without shame the public treasury,” without mentioning that the taxes were for the war with England or that such complaints were routinely leveled for political reasons against anyone possessing the right to tax. By contrast, Thomassy describes Philippe as the “heir in wisdom and determination of Charles V.” As for Isabeau of Bavaria, the odious queen “brought shame and infamy to sit on the throne of France and betrayed at the same time her feminine, maternal, and wifely duties.” Nor is it widely understood that the assumption that the queen suffered from a bad reputation during her lifetime is based on four unflattering comments in the chronicle of Michel Pintoin, the Burgundian-biased monk of Saint Denis, all from the same year in which Jean of Burgundy first tried to seize control of the mad king. And it is rarely acknowledged that evidence for the unpopularity of Louis of Orleans comes primarily from the same source, along with another anti-Orleanist chronicle, that of Pierre Cochon, and the justification of Louis’s assassination pronounced by Jean Petit on behalf of Jean of Burgundy. Even recent Christine scholarship continues to show the influence of the Burgundian narrative, drawing an equivalency between Louis’s regency claim and the attempts of the dukes of Burgundy to seize control of the government, seeing both as the “usurpation of power by the king’s brother, uncles and nephews.” About Christine’s view of the Duke of Orleans, we read that it is “evident that she wanted [him] in particular to take heed” of her writings on prudence. Philippe of Burgundy, by contrast, was “an effective diplomat as well as a sound military adviser,” and, more important, functioned as “a moderating force in the polemical atmosphere of the court.” Isabeau, Charles VI’s “beautiful, sluttish wife,” “encouraged” him “in his taste for pleasure.”  King Charles VI is imagined to have been reduced to rags while his family members pillaged the treasury to support their own luxurious lifestyles; gossip circulated about “the relations between the queen and the duke of Orleans, a liaison that lasted until the duke’s assassination in a Paris street near the queen’s residence in November 1407.”

This study rereads Christine’s major works from a perspective informed by recent historical scholarship on the Armagnac-Burgundian feud. Because the views of Burgundian chroniclers represent just one of several contemporary feud narratives, I widen the set of documents generally relied on to reconstruct Christine’s historico-political context. My argument, laid out in the following chapters, is that when Christine’s works are reread within this broader context— that is, when the Burgundian images of Louis, Isabeau, and Philippe are recognized as propaganda and supplemented with other sources— it becomes clear that the poet’s many narrative voices consistently support the Orleanists. She is of necessity discreet, but she does indeed “challenge the particular interests of the princes,” at least the Burgundian princes. Such a claim requires untangling two frequently confounded perspectives on the poet’s political interactions: first, her beliefs about regency, which follow from her view of kingship, and second, her interactions and personal friendships with noble patrons. Flattery of Philippe of Burgundy has often been assumed to be tantamount to promoting his regency claim. As I hope to show, however, Christine’s conception of regency was motivated by principles that remained steadfast throughout her career.

[xaharadesert]

Bard MC - Headcanon

Arcana Characters (Main 6) x MC

A/N: Okie dokie, this one is for a very lovely and very patient anon! Their request for an MC who can control magic through music is super cool! Honestly, I didn’t know exactly what a bard was when I first received this request, so I’ll be adding in a couple references about that as a joke :) I also tried to leave it ambiguous between whether the MC sings or plays an instrument, but I may have failed. My apologies, these may be a bit shorter than what you’re all used too, but I was struggling with this a little bit (also I am half asleep as I am finishing this, so I’m sorry if some of it doesn’t make sense). Also, I’m very sorry about using an outdated meme, but the oppurtunity was right there and I had to use it. As always, I recognize Asra’s non-binary gender orientation but will be using he/him pronouns! Please let me know if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes :) Requests are open!

❤️Julian❤️

Oh, yeah, he knows what a bard is

Like a singer... right?

Nope

When you tell him that you control magic through music, he has a small crisis and reevaluates every bard he’s ever met

He suddenly has quite a few questions about the inherent magic of music

Curious as always, he wants to learn more about how music acts as a medium for magic, which means a lot of questions

Most of his questions are based in psychology, because a small part of him that constantly doubts magic believes that you’re just a scientific genius

Overall, he supports you, of course

He loves music and the fact that you can cast spells using it is just an added bonus

Julian is already thinking about all the musical adventures you’ll have together

If you offer to teach him, he’ll respectfully decline

He’ll stick to the ordinary kind of music, thank you

On that note, unless it messes with your magic he will absolutely sing along whenever you’re preparing a spell

If this is a problem he’ll sing quietly to himself to avoid being a distraction

He’s sorry if it’s annoying to you, but he really loves singing

When he’s constantly surrounded by music he finds it hard to keep quiet

But if you’re okay with him joining in? He’ll belt some made-up lyrics at the top of his lungs

He may accidentally sing over you and your music, so even if it was originally fine, it will unintentionally cause problems

🧡Portia🧡

Oh, a bard!

That’s uh... a music thing, right?

I mean, she was mostly right

When you tell her that you can control magic through music she’s ecstatic

Magic in and of itself is super cool, but music too?! That’s amazing!

Portia wasn’t the biggest fan of music before, but you can bet your butt she is now!

She loves listening to you preform magic, and even if your not doing a spell, she loves listening to you

She wants to know what kind of songs control what kind of spells

In fact, she wants to know everything about your magic

You might as well be her official teacher because she never stops asking questions

In fact, asking if you can teach her eventually does come up

She’s a very eager student, although she often goes off track and starts inventing her own music

It’s not as effective, but she’s definitely having fun

Even if she never actually learns the magic part, she learned a cool new musical skill

She’ll create silly little songs to make you laugh

Sometimes when you use a particularly sad song for a spell, she’ll start to tear up

This can be a bit of a distraction, but she swears she’s not actually upset

You’re just amazing at what you do

Once Julian needed your help and her response was “this is so sad, MC play Despacito”

💛Lucio💛

Of course he knows what a bard is!

At least that’s what he claims

In reality he has no idea, he always referred to them as “music people”

So when you tell him about controlling magic through music he’s suddenly feeling a little afraid of every musician he made fun of in the past

He’ll never admit that out loud, though

Lucio thinks what you do is amazing

You can do magic AND you’re musically talented! That’s double the talent!

For a moment he considered mocking Asra for being less talented than you before remembering that you and Asra are friends

That doesn’t stop him from showing off your talents to everyone else, though!

Whether you really want to or not, you’ll probably have to show literally every Vesuvian your abilities at least once

Lucio himself isn’t particularly interested in learning your form of magic

He’d rather watch and listen as you preform spells

He doesn’t really want you to teach anyone else though, but he can’t really stop you if you choose to anyway

Sometimes he’ll ask you to preform a spell just so he can listen to you

He especially loves to hear slower songs for spells that ward off nightmares

When he listens to you, he genuinely feels calm and peaceful

He just exists in a perfect moment, with nobody but you and him

On a side note, though, sometimes when you’re showing off for other people he’ll try to sing along and it’ll always end up sounding horrible

💚Muriel💚

Doesn’t even pretend to know what a bard is

He never really had a reason to know, so he doesn’t

When you first tell him, he feels a bit awkward because he feels as if you expected him to know

But of course, your brand of magic was pretty unique so explaining your abilities was old hat by now

He’s not exactly sure how he feels about your methods

Of course he loves and supports you, but your magic... it’s just... a lot

It seems to require a lot of noise, and it draws way too much attention in his opinion

He would never try to change you, but he shrinks into himself whenever you gain a crowd from performing a spell in public

He starts to feel differently about it the first time he hears a slower song

When your music is soft and soothing he inadvertently feels himself relax

Knowing that you’re beside him, doing what you love, brings him a lot of inexplicable joy

Muriel doesn’t really have any interest in learning your kind of magic for himself, if he’s being honest

Although, he never minds when you want to talk about the complexities

He doesn’t mind very much if you need to practice late at night at home, because he doesn’t need to worry about other people intruding

Personally, he has no real uses for your magic so he never asks for your help

That isn’t to say he won’t accept it; if you want to use a song to help with menial tasks once in a while he won’t complain

The one exception is if you start using it for some creepy spell in the middle of the night

Then he may have a few complaints

💙Asra💙

The only one who actually knows what a bard is without your explanation

He was there throughout most of your magical growth, so he already knows a lot about it

In all honesty, if it weren’t for you, he probably would have been just as oblivious as everyone else

He loves how unique your method of performing magic is

Asra has never met anyone quite like you, and he doubts he ever will

Watching you perform your magic is one of his favourite hobbies (if you can really count that as a hobby)

Observing how your magic interacts with your music is incredible to him

He’s a little jealous, but he’d never say that out loud

You offered to teach him years ago and he eagerly accepted, but he never quite got the hang of it

In the end, he learned most of the theory behind it, but he mostly stuck to his own brand of magic

Even if he does admire your magic more than he admires his own, he does love the contrast between the two of you

(Spoilers) when he brought you back and was re-teaching you most things, your magic was one of the hardest

He felt horrible that he couldn’t properly demonstrate for you, but after teaching you the theories again, you seemed to pick it up on your own

On a side note though, helping you relearn your magic did allow him to grasp a couple of basic spells with your method, which makes him super excited

All in all he’s just thrilled that you have such a strong and unique brand of magic

He’s proud of how much you’ve grown into it, despite not having a proper mentor

Asra is a fan of quite a few unique types of music, but listening to whatever kind of music your using has definitely helped him settle on a few favourite songs

He doesn’t have a favourite kind of musical spell, so he’s excited no matter what kind of magic your performing

One time he even convinced you to cast a spell to heat up some tea faster just because he wanted to hear your music

💜Nadia💜

A bard?

As in, one who recites poetry, correct?

She uses the definition of a bard when describing what she thinks you do

Nadia is pleasantly surprised to find that your definition of bard is much more powerful, although she now has a few questions about how you go about defining words

She doesn’t have very much magical experience, so she was unaware of how unique your brand of magic was

But when she finds out exactly what it is you do?

She’s so excited

Nadia definitely loves music, although she leans toward slightly more refined tastes

She starts to question her favourite songs when she first hears you perform a spell

You manage to convey so much emotion, regardless of how long a spell or song is

She feels her heart pound in her chest whenever you use a lot of emotion in a spell

If you offer to teach her, she’ll have to politely decline

She knows how to play piano, sure, and her singing voice isn’t the worst, but she isn’t particularly interested in studying magic

She’ll just leave that part up to you

Of course, she’s always content to watch you perform, although sometimes it is a bit disruptive

If she needs a quick spell while in a meeting, a whole song can be a bit of a problem

She learns to work around this though, because she would never want you to ever change who you are

Although, she will admit she found it humorous when you chose a particularly aggressive song for a spell when trying to prove a point to Valerius

[my-watch-begins]

Drawing.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader.

Warnings: strong language, mentions of intrusive thoughts, pre-FATWS.

Words: 3.1 k.

a/n: had to get this idea out of my head.

Gif not mine! Credits to the author.

This is new for me.

Everything was new for Bucky, not only the clothes, the mannerisms, the people, the food, the neighborhood... Ever since his stay in Wakanda, his pardon and his current stay in his beloved Brooklyn, he was having trouble with basic human interactions. He'd been told he stared at people too much, he had a severe case of resting bitch face, and not only sometimes he couldn't be bothered with people's bullshit, people didn't put any effort in relationships these days.

He could count with one hand the amount of people that weren't on their phone as they had a coffee or "brunch" whatever that was. Even kids, three years old had their eyes glued to a screen that was already prog... No, don't think of that word.

He shakes his head to get rid of the train of thoughts he's sure it's coming, gloved fingers run through his hair and he sighs.

Programed, brainwashed, controlled, fuck.

He's about to storm the cafeteria, he's feeling his heart swell up in his chest. He's suddenly forgotten every single piece of advice his therapist has given him in order to keep his intrusive thoughts away. He's going to  leave his cup of coffee only touched once, but in an effort to look around for the exit, his eyes land on something different, a person on the table in front of him.

The woman sitting just at the edge of a booth, in front of her is a notepad tilted in front of her, he watches mesmerized as she glides the pencil from one side of the sheet to the other, then a few more followed.

He feels his breathing start to wind down, his eyes moving with the pencil and he sees the headshot of a person come through.

His eyes leave the paper just enough to look up at her, her profile peaking from a curtain of hair. He watches as she carefully tucks her hair behind her ear, revealing a pair of headphones latched to her ear.

She sighs and purses her lip, now Bucky's eyes drop down to the drawing as she erases a few things off. He's so entranced with the way her fingers hold the pencil he felt something shiver in his body when she grabbed a fountain pen and scribbled down a signature at the bottom.

Now he sits behind her almost every day, his arms are crossed on the table as he watches her draw portrait after portrait of the patrons in the café. Sometimes she gives them the drawings, he notices she spends too much time on so many lively details, her talent amazes him. The ones she doesn't give away she stores in a notebook.

The notebook she has used to be a simple one, now it's covered in colors, stickers, and it's so thick it doesn't close completely, things stick out of it in all directions, he can see different textures of papers, ribbons, photos. He's seen her close it as she stores the drawings that aren't of people, and he's seen her stroke the front of it at the spot where a picture has been taped to the cover.

He also saw when one day she bolted after receiving a message, leaving the notebook laying in the seat of the booth next to where she used to be.

He picked it up and walked in quick strides to catch up with her and give it back, but she was lost in the sea of people before he could.

Bucky took it back to his place, fighting an internal battle to not open it and peak throught it, a battle he lost after hours of staring at it.

It was incredible how much a simple book could tell about someone's personality. He'd learned her name, your name, drawing was just a hobby, you actually had a job and friends you hung out with, several polaroids of the lot of you were kept between the pages, some of them thrown in there haphazardly, some stapled to not get lost.

The notebook was actually an agenda, had days numbered, to-do lists, schedules, mundane things, but also mementos to remember events,  little post-it notes scribbled with things like "was praised at work, celebrate with some chocolate", and at the beginning of the week you'd write things you were grateful for. He felt a little something when he saw you'd written "my boyfriend" on the list to be grateful for, but was surprised when he saw a full page had been cleared up and written with a red marker across the page celebrating your break-up with said boyfriend. From there onwards the pages were fuller, you'd gotten a promotion, had more nights out, had a vacation. Whoever this ex boyfriend of yours was, he was definitely holding you back, then the drawings started. You would also write down some thoughts and feelings about the day that had passed, but he didn't linger too much on those notes.

He felt his chest tighten when he saw one of your pencil portraits of Steve's face in his helmet on the page that was the fourth of july, you'd written a long appreciation letter to Steve... Well, to Captain America really.

He couldn't keep going after that. He closed it and left it on the island counter.

Bucky didn't arrive before you the next day, he was hoping he at least got a few minutes to himself to figure out how he was going to approach you, but as soon as he walked in he saw you in your usual booth, head low, your fingers tracing the sides of the coffee mug in front of you. He scanned your face, noticing your puffed up eyes and red nose, your head hanging low and cheek propped against your closed fist.

The lost of the journal had definitely taken your sleep that night, he didn't want to accentuate your grief any longer, so he walked decided until he was standing next to you.

"Excuse me" he said, the journal clutched by one of his hands and pressed to his chest.

You lifted your gaze, your eyes scanning his quickly before they fell to your precious notebook.

Your face dropped in realitization and moved your legs to the side to stand up.

"You dropped it yesterday".

You stared at it dumbfounded, he thrusted it forwards and you instantly took it, your fingers going through the pages.

He smiled to the side when he saw your shoulders drop along with a heavy sigh of relief. You clutched the journal to your chest and bit your lower lip.

"Oh my god" you sighed as you looked up at him "thank you so much for picking it up"

"It's no problem" he dismissed with a wave of his hand.

"At least let me buy you a coffee" you turned around to grab your bag and swung it to your shoulder.

"You don't have to"

"Yes, I do" you pressed your hand to his bicep and lead him to the empty counter, one of the baristas approached you quickly and gave you two a smile "what are you having?" You beckoned him with a motion to the barista.

He definitely didn't plan to have breakfast with you that morning, but there he was, drinking some insipid tasting coffee and looking at you cut an obnoxiously big pastry you'd bought to share.

"What's this thing called?" He asked, looking at the swirl of pastry and something's brown in between, he saw you eat it peeling the external layers of it, your mouth forming a little smirk as you glanced at him.

"It's a cinnamon roll"

He grabbed it and inspected it, taking a big bite out of if.

You smiled and shook your head, your fingers finding your notebook and storing it safely in your purse.

"I hope you don't mind, I peaked through it last night" he admitted, you purses your lower lip forward and shook your head, peeling another layer of roll to eat.

"I don't mind, there's nothing interesting in it"

"There's some art" you chuckled suddenly, your eyebrows twisting.

"That's a strong word, I wouldn't consider it art"

"I would, I've seen you draw, you're very talented"

"You've seen me draw?" You inquired, tilting your head up and pulling a smirk when Bucky dodged your gaze and stammered.

"I- well" he joined his hands on too of the tale and intertwined his fingers, kicking himself for having blurted out something that made him look like a creep "yeah, once"

He reluctantly turned to look at you again, finding you staring back at him with little smile.

"I'll draw you, as a thank you gift" he saw you fish your notepad and a little pencil case.

"You don't have to" you gave him a little smile and your eyes narrowed, taking one pencil out of your case.

"It would be my pleasure" you lifted your pencil next to you, Bucky looked at it and gave you a good angle to start.

You began drawing the same starting point for every portrait you did, but you could instantly read some discomfort in his face, so once you had a good base you stood from your seat and walked to his side of the booth, motioning at him with your hand.

"Scoot". Bucky obliged, moving on the booth enough to let you sit comfortably next to him.

"I don't think you can draw me like this"

He saw you eyebrow twitch upwards and a little smile sneaked from your lips.

"You'll be surprised" you began by the general shape of his face, your own head tilting to the sides as you traced the lines of his jaw "I didn't want you to feel observed" you explained "I know what it's like to be on the other side of someone's notebook"

"Yeah, well, at least you're not judging" it was his turn to murmur in a complaining manner.

You continued, only stealing glances of him when you needed to double check if you were getting things right. During your time drawing you'd hiked up your leg on the seat and spent so much time getting every single twist and turn of his forehead, the creases of his eyes. You'd also felt him inch closer and closer as time went by, his arm propped up on the back of the booth and just on the back of your head.

"You spend so much time of little details" he mentioned. You didn't know if it was a comment or a complaint.

You glanced at him unsure of how to answer.

"Well, I'm usually listening to music and getting carried away by things like-" you motioned at the side of his face "that scar you've got there and how you got it and-" you continued, tracing one by one his eyelashes "the story behind the creases of your eyes and who made you frown so much that now you've got this permanent furrow in between your eyebrows"

"I have annoying friends" you smiled at the answer, giving finishing strokes to the little hairs that stubbornly fell from his clean haircut.

You left your pad on the table and moved around it to grab the bag you'd left on your previous side, revolving it's insides to find a stack of color pencils tied with an elastic band.

"You're going to color it?" He asked, seeing you pull out only three colors.

"No, just your eyes" you sat back and took the pad. Flipping the drawing back to reveal a fresh white page, you sampled one color, then glanced at him, directly at his eyes.

"Why just my eyes?" He inquired, feeling a scrutinizing gaze on his iris.

"Because they're a challenge to get right"

You lifted the pad to match the colored side to his eye, you repeated the process five time, Bucky scanning your facial gestures and watching them range from confusion, to distaste until you finally pulled a winning smile.

Content you'd actually gotten his eye color right, you shaded carefully, going back and forth between colors to get the right shade blended in. When you were finished you held it forwards to look at it completed.

"If I hadn't seen you draw it I wouldn't believe something like that was possible"

You smiled, unconsciously dropping your head at the compliment.

"What's your name again?" You asked, fishing your fountain pen and storing your pencil in the case.

"James"

He stared as you grounded the side of your hand and pinky finger on the paper, your other fingers moving the pen gracefully at the bottom of the page to write "For James, from-" and your name, all in cursive.

You carefully detached the page from the block and handed it to him, noticing just now that he had leather gloves on his hands. He studied it, giving you a tiny smile as he looked at you.

"Thank you" he nods at you, you nod back and flash him a bigger smile.

"You're welcome"

You stored the block and the pencil case in the bag, standing up and getting ready to leave.

"I have to go"

Bucky stood up and motioned at you to go before him, he opened the door of the cafeteria just as you reached it, your hands snuck into the pockets of your cardigan and you turned on your heels to meet with him for a final goodbye.

"Thank you for this" he had rolled the drawing enough to grasp it in his hand but not enough to crease it completely.

"Thank you for keeping my journal safe" you nodded, reminding him the reason why you'd gifted him the drawing "I post a few things that I draw on my Instagram" you offered, he shook his head with a little frown and snuck his hand into his jacket pocket to pull out a flip phone.

"My phone is kinda boring" you stared at it with a half confused, half surprised gape of your mouth "I mean, it doesn't have your number on it, so-"

Your mouth fell agape in even more surprised for a second then you bit your lower lip, lunging forwards to grab his phone from his hand.

"That was a good one" you praised, your fingers moving on the buttons of the phone, a smirk is painted on your lips as you finish saving your number, then return him his phone. "Bye James" you salute, containing the urge to but your lower lip at the sight of him again.

He salutes back, a goodbye accompanied with your name falling purposely from his lips as he stores the phone back in his pocket.

It takes a few days for him to get the courage to send the message. If anything, he's learned that people avoided phonecalls like the plague, people called and hung up just so make you aware that you hadn't answered the message they sent, it was really impersonal buy this time he preferred it. He spent an stupid amount of time writing the message to ask you out, all until he psyched himself to do it. He had always been a ladies man, he'd proven to himself that he still could get a girls number, he'd made you blush. Worst case scenario, you'll leave him on read.

You don't though, you answer his short "Hey, it's James, are you busy this weekend?" With a: "Hey James! I'm free all week" and what he later discovered was a winking face made out of a semicolon and a closed round bracket.

He meets up with you in downtown Brooklyn, he's surprised to see you in clothes that hug themselves to the natural curves of your body, and you're surprised when he hands you a single flower wrapped in a pretty foil arrangement.

You smile fully as you take it, leaning to catch it's scent and feeling your cheeks redden.

"I've never been gifted flowers before"

"Sounds like they've missed an opportunity" you smile again, your head tilting slightly to your shoulder.

"What do you have in mind?" You asked, changing the subject, Bucky motions behind him with his hand as he steps to the side.

"There's a bowling alley not to far from here"

Bucky found it easy to speak to you, he could talk about what he still remembered, he could tell you his favorite books or songs and you wouldn't do anything else other than smile or twist your eyebrows in surprise. He found himself talking about anything and everything and stop only to notice that you'd leaned over to table or your arm has propped your head on a closed fist as you listened to him talk.

You'd crushed him at bowling, had shared a pizza and had stayed chatting in the bar until the noise of the employees cleaning up had caught up to you.

Bucky walked you to your apartment complex a little way off the center off the city, he even enjoyed the comfortable silence between the two until you made a comment and sparked up in conversation again.

Bucky knew that times had changed, that the dating world wasn't as he remembered, and he also knew that because of how the night had gone, he could steal a kiss from you and you wouldn't mind.

What he didn't know was that you'd made up your mind about him the second the handed you the flower, so as soon as you reached your apartment building and he turned on his heels to meet face to face with you, you climbed to your tiptoes and kissed him. You heard his sharp intake of breath as you moved your lips on his, and you definitely felt his hand crawl to the back of your neck and press you to his body.

You couldn't contain a smile when he hummed in satisfaction, your tongue running along his lower lip teasingly.

You stopped, smiling and looking up at him just as he opened his eyes. Bucky felt time stop and slow down as you moved your face side to side, your nose touching his back and forth, each feather touch leaving him more breathless. The only thing in his mind when you pulled away and walked to the apartment door was holy shit, when are we doing this again?

You turn on your side as you hold the door open.

"Goodnight James" you salute, the sight of him bitting his lower lip makes you smile.

"You can call me Bucky if you want" he replies, his hands hiding in the pockets of his jacket.

You turn even more, the weight of your body changing from one leg to the other as you study his face and his request.

"I can call you Bucky if you want" you accentuate. There's a little something in his eyes, you pick up it's amusement at your answer, surprise. He only nods, making you nod in agreement as well. "Goodnight Bucky" you correct, the corner of his mouth turning upwards in a small smirk.

"Goodnight gorgeous"

[belpheroo]

Title: Fear & Loving in Devildom, Part 2 Pairing: Belphegor x female!MC Rating: M for discussions of mature themes Summary: Belphie is guilt-ridden, but also horny. Funny how often those two things coincide when you catch feels for the girl you killed. Notes: Yet another follow up to my Belphegor fics- A “maybe”, On the Way to a “Yes” and Fear & Loving in Devildom, Part 1

Belphegor had slept through the lunch break, arms folded over his desk as he breathed in deeply and even. He’d been sleeping very well lately. He always slept well, but there was something particular satisfying of late. In fact, his entire mood had been improved, even Beel remarking on how he was spending less time tormenting Levi and “stirring up shit” between Lucifer and Satan.

Half awake, he turned his cheek into his arm and heft a contented sigh before letting his mind go soft and blank.

A heavy weight abruptly draped over him, a chin digging into his back.

“Hey. You think you could knock me up? Being different species I was thinkin’ no, but then I realized I don’t actually know.”

God help him.

Belphegor didn’t respond, trying to fake being asleep now as his moment of peace slowly drifted away. Her weight disappeared and he watched her through half closed lids as she puffed out her stomach and rubbed a hand over it.

“We can name it Damien!”

“Please don’t insinuate our love child would be the anti-christ.” He said, voice muffled.

She laughed, puffing out the breath she was holding. She crouched down by his desk, forcing him to make room as she rested her own arms over the surface and meeting his eyes.

“Have I worn you out?” She asked smugly.

“No, but it would appear you are ‘reforming’ me.”

“I heard. Beel was saying you’ve been in a spectacularly good mood. Can’t imagine who is responsible for that miracle.”

She winked. Belphegor said nothing and opted to just watch her smile and be frustratingly beautiful.

“So whatcha think? Should we like, do the tried and true pull-out method from here on or invest in some condoms?”

“No complaints to pull out. I would like to see you on your knees like this, your face covered in my—“

At that moment, the door opened as a rabble of RAD students came pouring in. Lucifer among them. The eldest eyes had immediately settled on them upon his entering.

“— affection.” Belphegor finished.

She practically beamed as she snickered. He hid his face in his arms to avoid having to greet Lucifer as he made his way over to them. She stood up straight, fluffing out her skirt as she grinned up at him.

“Are you feeling well now? I was informed you took a sick day this week.” Lucifer said, his deep voice smooth and soft with genuine concern. Belphegor fisted his own sleeve beneath his hand.

“Oh— yeah. I’m fine now. Just had a bit of a cold. Probably not even a cold! Probably allergies.”

More like she’d been so sore from the perfectly thorough fucking he had given her, she could barely move her legs. Belphegor’s smile was hidden from sight.

“You should wear a face mask when you’re outside.” Lucifer said, half reprimanding.

“I will! No worries, I will take care of myself.”

Belphegor hated how sweetly she spoke to Lucifer, bouncy and light. It was the same way she talked to everyone but still, he hated it. Despite that, he would never try and crush that spark in her. She was a social butterfly and that charm was part of why he loved her. She had a light in her that drew in everyone like moths to the flame… he could hardly blame them for wanting to bask in this little sun here in Devildom.

Lucifer must have nodded, because their conversation stopped and he heard his footsteps fading away. She crouched down again, voice a whisper.

“What were you saying there? Something about covering me in your affections?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She smiled, wicked and amused before finally the teacher arrived and she had to go back to her own seat.

—

Belphegor didn’t care much to keep their growing relationship a secret from his brothers, but deferred to her wishes. She wanted to keep the “peace” for now, until she had time to properly show they were a couple. Belphegor was certain Beel had suspicions, if not just downright knew about them. Others who had likely tuned in were Asmo and Satan, one simply because of his intelligence and observation skills, the other because he probably could sense the change in the air by pheromones or some wacky Lust based shit.

No one had displayed too much objection to their spending time together except for Mammon, but that was to be expected. Mammon loved her. He loved her the way Belphegor loved Lilith. Devoted, but familial. This fact had kept Belphegor from glaring too many daggers Mammon’s way when she went off to hang out with him and play model at Majolish… or the fact that every other Devilgram selfie she posted seemed to include Mammon.

Jealousy still coldly laced its way through Belphegor’s blood sometimes, but despite himself, he knew she loved Mammon too. He was her first man, her best friend. There were things he could never replaced that Mammon gave her… but he reminded himself, there were things he gave her that Mammon definitely did not. The sound of her voice and the touch of her body, welcome and inhibited was all Belphegor’s. It was childish perhaps, to think of all the things Belphegor had wrung from those lips, all the things he had sparked in her heart that Mammon did not… but it calmed the beast in his chest.

After class, he had expected to find her waiting, but instead found the person he least wanted to speak to.

Lucifer gestured to him, waving his index and middle finger to beckon. Belphegor’s eyes narrowed, but he crossed the hallway at his leisure and came to stand nearby.

“What do you want?”

Lucifer normally would have prickled up at the disrespect, but Belphegor was surprised to find there was not even a trace of indignation in his older brother’s expression.

“I need to speak with you. Come with me.”

Any of the other brother’s would have felt anxiety at this no doubt, except maybe for Satan. Belphegor merely frowned.

“Do you remember what happened the last time you asked me somewhere to talk?”

Lucifer sighed, “Would you like to bring Beel with you?”

That… was not what he expected. A reprimand, a threat or a repetition of his demand? All possibilities. This? Not so much.

“I don’t need a sitter.”

“Then come along.”

Belphegor knew better than to try and force out a “please”.

—

It didn’t take long for Belphegor to recognize where they were going. Diavolo’s office. Thankfully, the room was devoid of Diavolo or his little servant, Barbatos.

“Why here?”

“Privacy.” Lucifer answered, leaning against the edge of Diavolo’s desk. It seemed even he wouldn’t presume to sit in Diavolo’s chair.

Belphegor noted Lucifer gesture for him to sit in one of the plush chairs before the desk, but Belphegor, despite himself, elected to stand.

“This is all wonderfully morbid, but if you could get to the point…”

“I have tolerated your cheek until present because… of the situation. But I would ask that you mind your tongue for the remainder and let me speak. I have questions. I ask you answer them simply and truthfully.”

Belphegor said nothing, fixing Lucifer with a piercing stare. When the silence had stretched out enough to Lucifer’s liking, he spoke again.

“What do you plan to do when she leaves Devildom and returns home?”

“Who-“

“Simply and truthfully.”

Lucifer’s voice was tinged with barely veiled anger. If Belphegor kept pushing him, he’d pop… and on a normal day, that would be a good time in his eyes, but for now Belphegor crossed his arms.

“I will visit her.”

“Frequently?”

“As frequently as possible.”

Lucifer nodded, “And where do you intend to find the energy reserves to propel the glyphs for such frequent trips? You’ll expend your own fast enough.”

“… the others will want to visit her too. We can share the burden.”

“Is that what you want? Visiting her with everyone?”

Belphegor frowned deeper. Sharing the burden would also mean sharing her and her time.

“I’ll make it work.”

“I suppose there is no point in asking if you have already been… intimate with her?”

“Not that it is any of your business, but yeah, Lucifer. I have. I made a pact with her.”

“And now you’re sleeping with her.” Lucifer said, less a question and more a simple disapproving statement.

“We fuck on occasion too.”

“How crass.” Lucifer said, distaste evident in how he wrinkled his nose and furrowed his brow, “So she is simply a means to sate your desires? An object of pleasure?”

“… why are you asking these questions? What is your game?”

“I am protecting her.”

Belphegor laughed, curt and mirthless.

Lucifer continued on unfazed, “You have made a selfish and fatal error. What do you think will come of this? You will break her heart and I will not allow it.”

“I have no intention of hurting her you presumptuous—“

“Your intentions are worthless. She will return to the human realm at the end of the term and there is nothing you or I or anyone can do to stop it! And this entanglement will only serve to prolong her suffering when that day comes! Have you thought nothing about this? What it would mean?”

Belphegor felt his throat seize around his words, keeping them strangled in his throat as he stared at Lucifer, eyes narrowed with growing rage… not all of it for Lucifer.

“… you’re a demon, Belphie.”

He hated hearing that nickname come from Lucifer’s lips, especially when he said it so gently.

“She’s a human. She belongs up there, not here with us.”

“Why did you even bring her in the first place?” Belphegor spoke, his voice raspy and low as he struggled to get out the words, “Why allow Diavolo to do it? I told you… it was a bad idea.”

“Do not pretend you were trying to prevent this. Not when we both know it was hatred that spurred your displeasure at that time… and now? You’re the very reason it has this… complication.”

Belphegor swallowed, tasting acid and feeling something still starting right at the height of his throat, spreading prickles over the roof of his mouth. He… he hadn’t thought about her leaving. He truly hadn’t. It had always felt like something he would have time for later, even as he lamented his “lack of time”. A part of him just… just assumed she would stay.

“What do you want from me? You want me to… what? Break her heart now? Lie to her? Tell her I don’t love her?”

Lucifer stiffened at the word, trying to keep his eyes from giving away his surprise as he met Belphegor’s own. Belphegor was certain he was a pitiful visage and Lucifer seeing it only added an edge to it that made him seem even more a pouting child.

“You love her?”

Belphegor bristled, anger making him quick to speak how he truly felt without a thought, “With every breath I breathe.”

It was Lucifer’s turn to look stunned. The rush died down as quickly as it sprung up, leaving Belphegor slow to speak once again.

“I... tried to keep my distance, but she wore me down… I… I didn’t intend…”

Too much. Belphegor closed that gate up as soon as he opened it, turning his face away from Lucifer’s scrutiny. He wished he could go back to those days, when he was young and full of light and trust and his older brother was someone he could talk to… someone he could confide in.

He’d forgotten himself, but it was only a momentary lapse. Lucifer must have sensed this, because his own demeanor relaxed and his arms fell from where they were crossed over his chest to his sides.

“This… is not a situation I think anyone was prepared for.” Lucifer said at length and Belphegor took it for the olive branch, masked as a non-answer, it was intended to be.

“I would have been remise in my duties as your brother if I did not speak up.”

Belphegor winced, “You picked a hell of a time to start giving a shit about that.”

“I have always ‘given a shit’, Belphegor.”

Ah, he was “Belphegor” again. “Always. You spent so much time with your head up your ass you just can’t see it.”

There was something… fond? In the way Lucifer said that? He even chuckled faintly.

“You’d know all about that.”

Lucifer snorted, “About being a rebellious child? Yes. In fact I do. Mankind wrote a lovely book about it, I suggest giving it a read.”

Belphegor laughed, surprising himself. When did Lucifer get a sense of humor? It did some to ease the tension, but still Belphegor was fairly certain he’d like to be anywhere but here.

“…I suppose I would just ask you be thoughtful to the situation. Understand that this relationship, should you both continue to pursue it, will have obstacles. Many obstacles. I say this to prepare you. And I suggest, if you have not already, you speak of it with her. It is all well and good to enjoy your time together, but at some point… be sure she understands what it means too. And if she is willing to traverse those obstacles with you.”

Lucifer averted his eyes in his usual fashion, looking up and away rather than down. Never down.

“It’s not just her getting hurt I worry about.”

“Ugh, gross.” Belphegor said, rolling his eyes for effect. Lucifer did not look remotely amused.

“I have said what I wanted to say. Though one last bit of advise…don’t be within arm reach when Mammon finds out.”

He flashed a wicked smile. Belphegor scoffed at it before he quickly left the room.

—

Belphegor’s D.D.D. had vibrated a couple times in the office and now looking through it he saw her usual messages, oversaturated with emoji.

03:15

☆*:.。.o(≧▽≦)o.。.:*☆

03:15

class is over!!!

03:16

come join me and Levi, we gonna play games!! (=`ω´=)

03:37

Belphie! didya fall asleep?!

03:43

jus text me when u wake up bb (´ ε ` )♡

04:05

Are you still with Levi?

04:10

yep! u wanna come play????

04:11

I’ll come by. I was talking with Lucifer after class.

04:11

〣( ºΔº )〣

04:12

Don’t worry, it was fine. I’ll be there soon, so wait for me.

04:13

(￣^￣)ゞ

04:14

(￣▽￣)ﾉ(ºωº )

04:14

is dat u pettin me?!

04:15

Yes, what else would it be?

04:15

(っ˘ω˘ς )

Belphegor found her where she said she would be, perched on the edge of a beanbag chair while playing a racing game against Levi. Given Levi’s attentiveness, she must have been doing well.

“Eh?! Another blue shell?!”

“Goddamn Baby Peach!!” She hissed in reply, clearly neither of them in possession of the dreaded item.

“Back up! Back up!!!”

“I’m trying!!” Levi said in a panic, both attempting to drop far back enough in the race lineup to avoid getting hit. It was too little too late, with the shell colliding into Levi’s character and then she was unable to get back up passed third place. The ending theme played and both of them threw themselves back with a groan.

“Remind me to never let you two drive me anywhere…” Belphegor said, finally getting their attention. Levi frowned, but she? She positively lit up, beaming at him with open delight.

“I gotta go, take me outta this round, Levi.”

“What? Already? I wanted to play a grand prix with you…”

“We can tonight! I’ll come back to play more after dinner, but I got some things I need to do for class and Belphie is helping me out.”

Levi didn’t look entirely convinced, but the promise of more game time coupled with how sweetly she was batting her eyelashes at him was a critical hit.

“Don’t be madddd, please?”

“..o-okay. Later then. Belphie, you should come play too.”

“Yay! We will!” She said, answering for Belphegor. She leaned in and gave Levi a peck on the cheek, sending the otaku directly to cloud nine. Belphegor tried to hide the tight grimace he made at the sight.

When she lifted up her hand for Belphegor to help her up, he was a bit rougher than usual, as if pulling her away from his brother.

“Later.” Belphegor managed and then ushered her out into the hall.

“Quit pushing, ya jerk.” She mumbled, pulling her arm free. Apprehension took the place of her cheerful demeanor, twisting her mouth into a frown.

“What did Lucifer say?” She whispered, looking around to make sure no other brothers were hanging around this part of the house.

“About what you’d expect. He knows about us.”

She clapped her hands over her face, half laughing and half groaning.

“Glad you find the possibility of me getting straight up murdered so funny.” Belphegor said with a chuckle.

“It’s not that! Just… god, I can’t even imagine his face. He must have been so uncomfortable… kinda wish I had been there.”

You love her?

With every breath I breathe.

Belphegor was pretty certain he was glad she wasn’t, the memory of his own words made his face feel hot. He hoped silently that it didn’t show.

“It was dumb. Just telling me to ‘be careful’ and usual Lucifer bullshit.”

“Ohh? Be careful of me? The lusty human exchange student?”

“Bit late for him to be warning me about that.”

She swatted him in the shoulder and Belphegor caught her hand, making a quick look around the hall himself before he pressed her up against a wall and kissed the smirk off her lips. For as sleepy as he was, there was nothing tired in his kiss. Like a spark on matches, one strike and he could feel her body light up.

She giggled incessantly into his mouth, the feeling like pop rocks of mirth and joy within his very soul. No matter how hard he kissed her or how he pressed his tongue against her own, still she was ever sparkling and noisy.

When he drew back she gave him one last tiny lick to his bottom lip, an enticement, but Belphegor restrained himself for now.

“…he also mentioned the end of the year is coming up.”

And just like that, her spark began to fade, settling unto the back burner as her expression softened to one of almost veiled disappointment. He knew it was the carefreeness she was disappointed to lose, but even she had to be serious sometimes.

“So?”

“…So?” Belphie repeated, eyebrow raising slightly.

“Yeah, so what?” She said, “I’ve already decided. I’m not going back.”

Now it was Belphegor’s turn to look snuffed out, drawing back and looking at her with a frown. He said her name gently and then, “…Diavolo isn’t going to give you a choice.”

“That’s such bullshit,” she seethed, voice rising, “…I’ll visit then. I’ll visit all the time.”

“How? You aren’t a witch.”

“Solomon maybe. Something. Maybe Mammon will tell me where his witches are!”

“You’re not making a deal with witches when you have pacts with us.” Belphegor said with an edge of warning, protectiveness coming out of him in an almost oppressive wave. There was just a hint of sulfur on the air.

“So… so then you’ll come visit! ...right?”

The way she said it, so uncertain, hesitant and unassuming… as if she genuinely believed there was a possibility the answer would be ‘no’ but was trying in vain to hide it.

“Of course I will.”

“Yeah… yeah, of course. Yeah.”

“Stop that…” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss her cheek and then her forehead.

“What? Stop what?”

“Acting like you didn’t think I would!”

“I’m not acting…” she defended herself with a grumble and Belphegor felt his stomach sink.

“I love you, you belong to me. I would never let you out of my sight for long.” Belphegor said, voice harsh and low so no one but her could hear. Whenever he said those words they were never gentle, but earnest and firm, as if he were still trying to convince her… and he could hardly be blamed with how shocked she seemed each time he said it.

It had nothing to do with Belphegor, this was something in her own thoughts and heart that made her worry such affections couldn’t possible be directed at her. Belphegor snaked his arms around her, pulling her in close enough that he could press his forehead to hers, his hands laced together and resting against her lower back.

After a moment and a soft sigh, she lifted her arms up around his neck and pressed back hard enough that Belphegor muttered a half-hearted “ow” as she dug her own forehead into his.

It felt so safe, so warm and secure in his arms… his entire body had relaxed beneath her own touch and together they enjoyed the brief reprieve from the stress and far away worry of her departure.

Belphegor’s eyes were getting heavy, lids falling and fluttering as he fought back the urge to fall forward into her and just let himself dose, wrapped up in her scent.

“… we’ll figure it out when we get to that point.” She said at length. Belphegor mumbled an agreement and did finally move to sink his forehead against the crook of her neck, huffing a heavy contented sigh. The wall behind her kept them upright, but she batted at his back after a moment.

“You’re smashing me.”

“You never complained before.”

“Different kind of smashing!”

Belphegor chuckled darkly, but even she knew there was no chance of him finding the energy for such activities anytime soon. His avatar was claiming its needed afternoon nap and the aura was enough to make even her feel a sudden need to sleep.

“Attic nap time?”

“Mmhm, yes.” Belphegor said, more than happy to retreat to their private world away from the rest of the House of Lamentation. It was strange how a prison had now become a refuge, a sanctuary where nothing mattered… just him… and her.

She yelped in shock when he bent down and scooped her up with ease. She locked her arms tighter around his shoulders and her legs around his waist as his hands gripped under her thighs.

She giggled, releasing some of her hold with her legs so she could give them a few girlish kicks.

“Don’t make me drop you… I’m not as strong as Beel.”

Belphegor wouldn’t, of course. His strength far surpassed a human and carrying her felt like carrying nearly nothing at all… except for just the slight edge of heaviness in his own limbs from tiredness. Regardless, his words got her to tighten her legs around his waist again, a sensation he greatly enjoyed.

“Take me to bed or lose me forever.” She said, quiet and giggling by his ear.

Belphegor snorted, but he knew the follow up line from the human film well enough now.

“Show me the way home.”

[0dirty-deals0]

Lucky You, Lucky Me (Mammon x GN! Reader)

A/N: Based off the theory(?) That if Mammon likes you he brings you luck. First Obey Me fic, don't be afraid to tell me what you think! Thank you!

It was Mc's turn to do grocery shopping today, though Lucifer didn't want them to go alone so he had Mammon follow them as their personal 'guard dog' as Lucifer claimed. Complaining was a given, though he didn't do as much of it since Mc was involved.

If he was being honest, he was glad he'd be the one going with Mc since this would mean a bit more time alone with them. He savours every moment with them, from just playfully bickering about brand types to Mc dragging him around by holding his hand tight. He would never say he loved those little moments with them out loud though, so he hides behind his usual air of confidence. 

"Aren't you glad you get the chance to hang out with me, Mc?" 

"Of course I am, I'm going out with my boyfriend after all. I hope you like going out of with me too.," 

Sometimes that confident persona shatters quick though when Mc pulls a power move such as that (with a sincere smile to boot!). He's reduced to a blushing, stuttering mess as Mc continues to happily navigate through the different aisles of the store. 

Despite his many complaints, he never minds being dragged by Mc. It isn't as emotionally draining as it is to be around his brothers. With Mc he feels recharged, a bit more pep in his step that amplifies whenever they praise him or just say a simple 'thank you'. They make him feel lucky that they're close to one another. 

When it's about time to pay, Mc gives him some money and asks if he can get something for the both of them at the convenient store. 

"You do realize who your givin' this to, right?" Mammon still takes the money and keeps it in his wallet anyways. "I could just take this money and buy whatever I wanted with no regard of what you wanted." 

He's digging his own grave, he knows he is but hey it's a bigger warning than anything he'd give his brothers. Hell, he'd probably not even spare them a second glance and walk away.

"I trust you enough to know you won't do that," Mc answers honestly as their eyes continue to look at the items being scanned. They have no idea how their answer makes him feel, he just lets out a scoff to hide his growing blush. 

"Suit yourself, human. Don't blame me if I don't get ya anythin'," they give him a casual thumbs up as he walks away. 

He walks around the convenient store grabbing all the snacks he knows the two of them like. He even grabs one or two new things for them to try together as well. As he's paying he notices that a bakery beside the shop is selling something that Mc has been dying to get their hands on, but never seemed to have any luck doing so. He pays quickly and walks over to said bakery to investigate. 

To his surprise and sheer luck, they seemed to have just made a new fresh batch. He quickly walks in and gets as many as he can for the two of them and pays up. He hands them the snacks from the convenient store and decides to keep the treat a surprise until they reached home.

Once home he presented the treat to them proudly. "Lookie here at what I got you, I'm pretty amazin' right?" Mc is quiet for a while before they practically tackle Mammon into a hug. 

"Holy shit-! What's wrong-" 

"hOW DID YOU GET THIS, THEY WERE SOLD OUT EARLIER WHEN WE PASSED BY!" 

"They made a fresh batch when I was glancin' around," Mc was practically vibrating on top of him and he was finding it hard to not just hug them back from how cute they seemed.

"Are you serious!? Mammon they never make these things twice! Once they're gone, they're GONE! Or so said the advertisment," Mammon hands them the big bag of baked goods. 

"Sometimes adverts lie, human. If anyone should know it's me." 

"Yeah but, this is seriously amazing," Mc couldn't help but squeal a little as they opened the bag to observe, though upon observing they froze a little. That made Mammon nervous. 

"Something wrong?" 

"No, I just," Mc looks at Mammon, a little concerned. "These are usually hella expensive. It's a miracle if we could even afford 2 but there's like a dozen in here. Did we even have enough leftover money from the shopping trip for this?" 

Mammon hands Mc his wallet and sure enough there was still cash in it, if anything there seemed to be a lot more cash than they expected. 

Mc turned her attention to Mammon once again. "...We must have gotten really lucky today, huh?" A smile spreads onto their face once again and Mammon can't help but return it with a genuine one of his own.

"I guess so." 

They kept quiet for a moment as they  glance at the things around them, the snacks, the wallet filled with cash and the pastries just waiting to be eaten. 

"...Wanna head to my room now so we can enjoy all of these together?" 

"I thought that was the main idea?" 

Mc laughs and gets off Mammon, offering a hand to help him up which he takes with no problem. He lets his hands linger on theirs for a while longer before letting go completely.

Once in Mc's room, Mc heads out for a while to get some of the snacks they left behind in the kitchen and asks Mammon to pick a movie for them to  watch (make fun of) together while they're gone. 

Once they're gone, Mammon's mind wanders as he goes through the titles. He realizes that at the convenient store he was in, he most definitely used up all the money in the wallet buying those snacks. He doesn't remember doing anything... out of legal means to get the extra cash so he wonders where it came from. He just remembers feelings like he had to get those treats for Mc, just to get some praise from them, just to make them happy because of him. 

A few snacks come raining down on him and he jumps at the suddenness of it all.

"I have returned with our snacks! Did you choose a movie already?" He hands them whatever it was he was holding at the moment and Mc goes to play it with no questions asked. 

They then plop down next to him on the bed, snuggling up close as they share with him the treats they now have quite the abundance of. 

Mammon takes a bite of the treat and his eyes widen, "Oh holy shit, I didn't expect them to taste this good." 

"I didn't either!" Mc admits, they're just wiggling with happiness next to him. "Maybe it tastes better because you're sharing it with someone you love?" 

Mc giggles at the groan Mammon lets leave his lips though he does begin to wrap an arm around Mc, pulling them close to him. Mc plants a quick kiss to his cheeks in reponse to his action.

"Stupid, we were just super freakin' lucky today like you said," despite his 'harsh' words, he has to admit, right now in this very moment, he was lucky to have you beside him. His partner in crime and most importantly, someone who loves him as much as he loves them.

[hatredofmusic]

My 50 Favorite Albums Of The 2010s

Alien Observer / Dream Loss [Only two of a large number of insanely good records Grouper released this decade]

An Empty Bliss Beyond This World [Weird music weird feelings. Memory and its fragility and impermanence.]

Because I'm Worth It [Of the post Hype Williams output, Dean gets the most recognition, but Inga's solo album gives me all kinds of weird feelings too.]

Between Two Selves [Maybe the best deep house record of the decade]

Black Is Beautiful [The most intriguing record from one of the decade's most intriguing bands. Here they are at the height of their powers, together, as a musically powerful group. I miss my red vinyl copy :( ]

Black Ken [In 2017 rap is a barren landscape and Lil B is its wandering prophet. It took a long time to gestate but Black Ken sounds like exactly what it is. It is post-post-rap. It is the self produced Lil B mixtape. It is Based.]

Black Up [This is the dopest hip hop record of the decade, of all the ones I heard. I should get into their other one.]

Blue Flame [6 Kiss was released in December 2009 digitally and in early 2010 on CD, so I can't in good consience call 6 Kiss a 2010s record, but someone might, and if you do, it instantly becomes the most important hip hop album of the 2010s. I could probably write continuously in adoration of Lil B. To me Lil B was the endpoint of rap. There is very little post Lil B of interest to me in hip hop. When I heard his music I felt this was it, rap has eaten itself. Blue Flame is like rap hell where everything that qualifies what makes good hip hop has been destroyed and is so far behind us in the rear view that we can only focus on what terrifying things may lie ahead.]

The Butterfly Effect [If you don't already know Shinichi Atobe, get to know him. His reemergence was one of this decade's proudest legacies and all of his records are worth putting on repeat.]

Cosmogramma [Wild, jazzy, futuristic... a total departure from his prior work. The Coltrane family is quite good at outdoing themselves.]

Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask [Great psychedelic ambient record. I listen to this before sleep all the time.]

Double Cup [Rashad's vision of Chicago is expansive and innovative. He is the heart and soul of footwork. Pick any of his records, or even any compilation he appears on, and it will rank among the most important footwork records. See also: the Rollin' EP, AND, RP Boo - Legacy!]

Electronic Dream [Beyond the MPC work, this feels like it slots in with all of what was going on relating to nostalgia and memory at the time. This sounds like late night Dance Factory on FM radio. Somehow, classy and sleazy at the same time.]

Floral Shoppe [Uhhhhhh I think vaporwave is cool and important and there's probably a whole mess of amazing vaporwave records from this decade but this is the best one right?]

For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) [Weird ambient music, weird ambient feelings. See also: Colonial Patterns]

Going Places [See also, the companion record "Being There".]

Grid of Points [Grouper's mini album is a heartbreaker.]

Hash-Bar Loops [I was in Amsterdam for half of 2011 so this is an oddly important record to me]

Holding New Cards [Variety hour with Keita Sano is exhilarating]

It Can Be Done, But Only I Can Do It [Omar-S made the most ebullient house music of the last two decades. He is simply the king of house right now. I will be humming his tunes until death. No one in the genre writes a simple melody better. Great fully formed house LPs are supposed to be an anomaly and he just cranks them out. This one has his best tune, which was one of the best tunes of the decade.]

Jai Paul [The Jai Paul leak was the best album of the decade by far]

Joy One Mile [Futuristic sounds from synth queen. I miss my copy :( ]

Late Nights With Jeremih [Best free mixtape of the decade by a country mile.]

Made The Harbor [The only folk record this decade that I adored]

The Magic Place [Lovely ambient! I adore it It's just so beautiful. I miss my copy :( ]

The Narcissist II [With this we are still in the most fruitful era of Hype Williams mythology. Inga Copeland drops in for arguably the duo's finest moment]

Platform [Wackiest things in 2016 included elections, sports championships and this Holly Herndon record, which I somehow did not sell :) ]

Pull My Hair Back [I didn't sell this one either, I couldn't, it's too important to me; every track on this Hyperdub classic is lovely]

The Psychic Paramount II [Excellent prog noise rock. I saw these guys open for The Jesus And Mary Chain once when I was on acid]

Quarantine [Weird music weird feelings. I miss my copy of this record :( I had to sell it for rent money or something but man was it a nice record with nice artwork.]

Ravedeath 1972 [Just one of his many great ones]

Replica [It may be the smartest move to list Chuck Person's Eccojams instead but Replica is an album I have some personal attachment to. 2011 was a rough weird year and this is a rough weird album. I listened to it on acid. I listened to it in Paris. It fucked me up.]

Resonant Body [The state of rave music in 2019 is very good]

Rhizome [I was at this show. As far as Merzbow output goes, this was easy listening. I didn't even need the earplugs.]

Room(s) [Quite sophisticated juke type music. At the type it felt quite innovative. I still listen to Machinedrum quite a bit, and I really dig those Sepalcure records, but tbh this was the one Machinedrum record I was really into]

Ruins [Ooof. Just unbearably unbelievably beautiful. I guess Grouper must nab The Artist Of The Decade Award from my personal award show.]

Severant [This one aged well. It sounded crazy and like nothing else at the time and that's still how I feel about it.]

Social Housing [I get the complaints but I think we have all become far too removed from Chicago house and we are blessed to have current producers do the style so well.]

Splazsh [Someone once wrote that Darren's pieces play on distance. Listen accidentally from another room and weird sounds snake their way into your memories and feelings and emotions.]

Syro [Plenty to love from everyone's favorite electro-trickster. It launched a more than adequately fruitful period for the Cornwallian]

The Tape Hiss Hooligan [Green Ova affiliated. This is a hard asf rap record. It's really good stoner rap.]

The Teac Life [Plenty of great singles and LPs and more from Legowelt this decade but this was his best one. Cinematic psychedelic deep house. The free reissue with bonus tracks was just an incredible value.]

Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself [Omar truly outdoes himself. He's the only guy making LPs of straight ahead club music that is anywhere close to this good. Plenty of gems to be found here.]

Ultimate Bitch [Lil B turned up to 11. Virtually all essential elements of his mystique are present. Shocking, hilarious, out of control, unbelievable.]

Vulnicura [Björk had a great decade and I would recommend picking up Utopia also. This was her best one.]

Where Dancefloors Stand Still [A DJ Sprinkles deep house mix cd? Order me 500 copies]

XXX [Either you like Danny Brown or you don't. I get it if you don't.]

Yeezus [Don't talk to me about MBDTF. It's good, we all liked it, but I prefer the follow-up way more.]

100% Galcher [Any and all Galcher releases qualify as interesting music for this decade. 100% was only the first taste of Galcher Lustwerk but it included all of his best early material.]

808s & Dark Grapes II [Tremendous.]

[lingxiaomo]

Hello!! So I just finished mdzs and I’m really craving for some good food bl novels and I wanted to start legendary masters wife but I’m kind of nervous because of its length and how some reviews have said the relationship is toxic and that it gets kind of boring later on :( I’d like to hear your thoughts on it and if it’s really worth reading! Thank you so much ❤️

Hi!

If you are referring to the reviews on NovelUpdates, I wouldn’t trust them. I read several reviews and felt many were inaccurate. (”Not much BL” “MC always weak and needs saving” are definitely ignorant about facts)

I love LMW a lot, so I never felt bored! Some people think it’s boring because the author makes a lot of world-building explanations. The author also goes into detail whenever there is pill-making. This, however, is actually what appeals to many LMW fans.

I was nervous about the length too! But I quickly became obsessed- quickly reading up to the current translation at the time. The MC and ML truly interact after 25 chapters, but those chapters are short. They will feel shorter if you like the world-building and MC.

One characteristic I like about LMW is the perspective. As you read it, you may get the impression that the mysterious male lead (Ling Xiao) is like a main protagonist of a story. (Including his name!) I like the theory that LMW focuses on the path of the love interest (You XiaoMo).

I also adore how You XiaoMo doesn’t doubt their relationship. He feels loved and trusts his man. He knows Ling Xiao would not abandon him. They get jealous, but that makes reading their relationship more spicy, you know? The bets, tricks, and deals keep it spicy too.

The story has a little bit of everything!

You might like LMW if you like:

Farm RPGs

Slow burn romance

Watching the main character gradually grow in strength (weak to strong)

Cute, small protagonists

Tsundere protagonists

Hard-working protagonists

Male leads that like to bully (pulling hair braids)

Possessive, loyal male leads

Expressive male leads

Flirtatious male leads (to the main character)

Male lead that is uncaring of others, but is sweet to MC

OP male lead

Demon beasts

Height difference/Size difference

Power couple

Surprise sex, some dirty talk

MC that is comfortable being a bottom

Lots of comedy, less angst than MDZS

Master/servant to sect brothers to friends w/ benefits to lovers to soulmates

Gay side couples

Seeing the pill-making side of cultivation, instead of practitioners

Fighting and adventure, with plenty of down time

Satisfaction of stupid cannon fodder getting defeated or killed off

Secure, trusting relationships

Further discussion under the Read:

That said, LMW cannot be given without warnings, unfortunately. 

If you do not enjoy the chemistry and their potential within 220 chapters, I have doubts that you will like the story at all. The major arc after that is pretty fun though.

—

A common complaint is the author often makes the male lead call the MC and idiot or mock the MC’s intelligence. 

It has been argued that this could be a cultural difference. If you read it, you will notice the narrator affectionately does the same thing.

I also heard their relationship can be considered realistic like Chinese/certain Asian couples in real life. I remember one of the translators compared it to her friends’ relationships. I don’t know personally though, so I can only say it depends on the reader!

I understand it can feel like too much though. I generally thought it was light-hearted, but around the 580s I disliked it because it felt out of place and unnecessarily inserted. Fortunately, it felt less tense after that small arc.

Amusingly, the author implied that the male lead has a teasing fetish, He knows the MC is usually smart, but he says certain words because he loves to watch the MC make cute, angry faces. 

—

There is some dubious consent here and there.

The first time they touched each other, it was silly, in my opinion. It was one of those things stupid boys might do. I have heard weirder stories about men doing things together XD

The second(?) time will depend on your level of tolerance. It’s one of those things that’s bad in real life, but is interesting in fiction. I was forgiving because the male lead is weird, but is concerned about the MC’s feelings. And Momo doesn’t avoid him because of what happened. (AKA they help each other with certain things a looot)

I think their intimate scenes are sometimes difficult to understand if you are not familiar with Shy Tsunderes. You XiaoMo tends to have difficulty expressing what he wants… You will have to observe both his feelings and behavior.

For example, he will seem scared and want to run away, but then it turns out he is overwhelmed. Then he will say he likes being intimate with Ling Xiao.

He will say Ling Xiao is mean, when he said many chapters ago that Ling Xiao treats him well. And then he still doesn’t avoid Ling Xiao.

One time he sounded scared, yet he had a nice talk with Ling Xiao along the way to the bedroom and later just hid under the blanket until Ling Xiao was ready. He stayed on the bed! It was more like he was shy, but with anticipation and a little excitement.

Based on a number of scenes, I felt like the MC secretly enjoys when the ML gets pushy (An element for excitement), but that’s my interpretation! It’s definitely not everyone’s taste.

—

There is misogyny. Like a typical BL, there are less females and some of the notable antagonists of the MC are female. There are some really weird statements in the narrative.

There are good female characters at least (and neutral). They are not as prominent as the males, but many have names, speak, and take some kind of action. It’s not just love interests either.

If you are concerned about r pe attempts, I think there are two. HOWEVER, it’s not between the main couple. It’s not between the side couples either. It’s only said by cannon fodder and then they get beaten up.

—

Also, don’t expect realistic sex LOL. It’s more fantasy, so just have fun. Although, it was implied they use lubrication, other than the scenes described more in detail. It shocked a lot of readers hahaha. There is also a… unique and exciting fact later mentioned when they are intimate… but I won’t spoil that! It might actually be 2 facts, but I’m still not sure XD

—

You XiaoMo and Ling Xiao BOTH do a lot of little romantic things, but it’s understandable to forget those things in a long story.

The couple mutually love each other. I can guarantee you that. They are not perfect, but they let the other know that he cares.

[emptymanuscript]

Pet Peeve, the

So, the book I am reading has hit one of my big pet peeves. One of my biggest.

It’s distinguishing fundamentally between a good and a bad story. Even if those aren’t the words it’s using.

In its own terms between a story and a situation. A story being the type of writing that follows its parameters. A situation being everything else. Situations of course have their place and can be excellent but aren’t stories.

I hate this concept. Not just here but as a general principle. Because it ALWAYS comes down to taste.

The book has given the nonspecific example of a teen slasher flick. Anything where it’s all action with no character motivation. Of course two of the paragons of story held up at prior points was Jaws and Die Hard.

I had this professor in college. He insisted that Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t a Sci-Fi writer. Which is obviously ridiculous to anyone who has ever read Kurt Vonnegut. After a lot of pushing and pressing a friend of mine finally got out of him that he said that because he didn’t like Sci-Fi but he did like Vonnegut. So he had taken the extra step off the derp end and decided that his taste defined genre.

Having watched that professor’s mental contortions it became kind of obvious afterwards. This is what people do. And they go to great lengths to make it work. They create the “good” category out of what they personally like and the “bad” category out of what they don’t and then tie themselves in knots trying to keep it working.

I love Sci-Fi. In principle. I HATED the new Battle Star Galactica series. It’s one of my deep regrets in life that I watched all of it, getting angrier and surlier with every episode that disappointed me. And there’s no sane argument to be made that BSG wasn’t Sci-Fi. Not one complaint I have would be a legitimate critique of its Sci-Fi-ness.

More than that, not one story critique I could make, and I made many at the time, would be a sane argument that it was somehow not a story. Because that’s not the way the world works. Individual tastes don’t determine what something is.

There’s not story and situation. There’s not literate and trash fiction. Genre fiction isn’t bad because particular people prefer literary. That’s tastes not facts.

As with science, if you run into a theory of fiction or story or characterization or whatever that cannot accomodate the observed facts then theory must change or be abandoned.

In this kind of case it’s simple. I tend not to like Sci-Fi but I do like what Vonnegut does with it. I love Sci-Fi but I didn’t like how BSG treated its story and character arcs enough that I didn’t like it even though it was Sci-Fi. Stories TEND to work better when the plot derives from character motivation and it results in a change of moral outlook on the part of the main character.

And to be 100% truthful this is the real reason that I keep running back to the MICE Quotient. Because it’s acknowledging that there are at least 4 primary types of story construction based on the same fundamental principles present in all stories. And the only idea I have encountered that seems more accurate is that there may be 6. It doesn’t cover everything but it acknowledges a fundamental truth that most writing guides like to avoid:

(y)our way of making a story not only isn’t the one way to do it, there’s a decent chance it’s not the best way.

[aleesblog]

How Proust Can Make You a Better Neurologist by Alastair Wilkins

It was a Proustian moment, of course, the sunlight filtering through the blinds at the start of an afternoon clinic, bathing the room in an uneasy, watery half- light, as the Professor, elegant and aloof, strode into the room, took his chair and surveyed the list of patients without even a glance at the assemblage of registrars and visiting dignitaries. Dr X, to my left, erstwhile attending neurologist to the Queen of Y, shuffled uneasily, gazing intently at his new mentor, studying the lines on his face in order to gauge the spirit of the next four hours, cooped up in this consultation room with its cork-lined walls. He recalled last week’s clinic with its emphasis on nosology, the subtle messages he had obtained from the Professor to study a particular chapter of his text book and the embar- rassment he had suffered for thinking Brown-Séquard to be two people.

But he was, as indeed we all were, in luck. The Professor, now smiling to himself, took out a document from the pile of manuscripts without which he never travelled, and reread the first few lines, before handing it to me with the words: “I thought you might be interested in this”. I smiled, and between us we shared a moment of understanding that signified our common interest in taking neurology to a higher level; in exploring the endless possibilities which broken minds open up to our understanding. After all, we were co-authors of a recent article in a respectable journal on the link between neurology and literature.

This moment of connection between two like-minded people underlies the bond of friendship and respect, but I, in my role of student, had never once thought of its reciprocation, until this time when I started to read the docu- ment which he had handed to me in such a way. It was an obituary of a recently deceased ‘pioneer’ of modern neu- rology, who had practiced in a room not twenty yards from where I now stood and whose portrait still hangs in the gloomy hostility of the lecture theatre: William Walton Gooddy M.D.Lond., FRCP, consulting physician to the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and University College Hospital, London. Gooddy was a man who, so the obituary claimed, differed from the usual neurologists of his time by being ‘amusing and charming, lacking the austere asceticism and obsession regarded as prerequisites for success’. I read on as the Professor turned his attention to the list of patients before him and the prospect of being late for his five o’clock meeting, again, but my thoughts were arrested by the sentence that I have looked back on since and re-examined over and over again: ‘His first words to me on starting neurology were that I should take a week off to read À la Recherche du Temps Perdu as this would be far more useful in my career than Big Brain, the standard textbook of neurology.’

Of course, I knew a little about the book, noted for its length in particular, but had not previously given serious

thoughts to reading it, tending to agree with Bellow’s ver- dict on writing that as he grows older everything he reads tends to be not short enough. But from that moment I started to wonder why he should have given that advice to a neurologist in training. What could there be within those 3000 pages which would inform a budding neurol- ogist concerning the mysteries of the brain? How could a work of fiction help to understand the consequences of neurological injury?

And so I read the book, which, over its closely printed pages, became not only an amusement or a way to pass a few hours of leisure time, but an experience of time itself. Only today, walking through the hospital grounds on a cool autumn morning, did my gaze fall upon a tree, denuded of half its leaves, and I recollected that I had sat under its blossom laden boughs and read a few pages of the Bal des têtes. Just as the protagonist associates physical cues with memories, undoubtedly Proust expected the reader to use the book as a temporal guide for the months spent pondering its pages. Indeed the association of mem- ories, famously illustrated by the smell of tea-soaked madeleines, is of much interest to the neurologist who has an interest in cognition.

‘And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine ... which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated segment which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morn- ing to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. And as in the game wherein the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with water and steeping in it little pieces of paper which until then are without character or form, but, the moment they become wet, stretch and twist and take on colour and distinctive shape, become flowers or houses or people, solid and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish church and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea.’

The ‘petites madeleines’ phenomenon has entered medical parlance (albeit transiently and perhaps erroneously) to

Alastair Wilkins is our Case Report Co-ordinator. He is Senior Lecturer in Neurology and Consultant Neurologist, University of Bristol. He trained in Neurology in Cambridge, Norwich and London. His research interests are the basic science of axon degenera- tion and developing treatments for progressive multiple sclerosis describe patients recovering from amnesia. Maybe those patients are the ones who seek most vehemently to recap- ture‘LostTime’.Butmuchmorethanthis,Proustexplores not only the way memories are rekindled in us, but why we recall particular events; how each one of us remembers the identical person or event in a different way; and even how dreams compound and interfere with memories. If Proust were to sit in our consulting rooms (for his multi- farious complaints) what kind of history would he give to us? Undoubtedly a highly detailed one, but he would probably point out to us that a hundred people suffering from the same symptoms would present a hundred differ- ent histories. It is up to the doctor to interpret these.

And what of doctors? Proust presents several in his novel, most notably Dr Cottard. Cottard was, in all prob- ability, based upon Jules Cotard, a contemporary of Charcot in Paris. Proust’s father (Adrien) was a distinguished physician who trained with Cotard at the Ecole de Médecine and the young Proust would have met many medical people. Yet Proust had an uneasy relationship with the medical profession. His own illness, reflected by the infirmity of the protagonist of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, consisted of severe asthma and a multitude of other complaints. The prevailing view at the time, thought also to be held by Adrien Proust, was that asthma was a nervous habit that could be treated by isolating vic- tims in sanitaria for nervous diseases. The theory that conditions such as asthma were psychosomatic flourished in those times. Perhaps it is little wonder then that he had a deep mistrust of some within the profession. Nevertheless, Proust’s writing is highly influenced by medical terminology and analogy. The protagonist of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu suffers from ‘neurasthenia’ and is never far from his bed. His infirmity leads him to observe objects and occurrences in the minutest detail; and, more importantly, reflect on all those experiences he has had in his life. Many of these reflections centre around his illness or the illness of others. His metaphors are often medical and there is little doubt that Proust was fascinat- ed with medicine; the novel using themes of subconscious thought and dreams to explain emotions. One might say Proust ‘medicalises’ human suffering and experience (for instance he describes Swann’s love for Odette in terms of ‘malade’, ‘convalescent’ and ‘chirurgien’). To a certain extent, this may reflect the contemporary move- ment in France, led by Charcot (who is mentioned in the work), to illuminate the function of the mind and ratio- nalise the disciplines of neurology and psychiatry.

The death of the protagonist’s grandmother is of major significance in the novel. She becomes unwell before suf- fering from a stroke and consults a variety of medical practitioners. She consults a doctor called duBoulbon (predicted by Charcot to be the next great name in Neurology). He diagnoses neurosis and expounds his theories on human illness (no doubt reflecting some of Proust’s ideas). du Boulbon also states, when explaining the grandmother’s diagnosis, that ‘everything that we think of as great has come to us from neurotics’. Thus, he introduces a link between creative sensitivity and illness. In a way, Proust is telling us that he would never have written À la Recherche du Temps Perdu were it not for his own suffering. Could this explain some of his hostility towards physicians and their desire to cure all illness?

The paucity of and often bizarre nature of treatments in Proust’s day linked to the pompous and dictatorial man- ner of doctors (‘the symptoms you show will simply dis- appear at my command’) underlies much of the medical text in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Proust goes further than expounding medical impotence and lays the root of illness at the door of the medical profession: ‘for each ill- ness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill’. Perhaps this is a little harsh. It may be that Proust was presenting an alternative to the vogue for turning all illness into psychosomatism.

So Proust describes illnesses from the patient’s point of view and presents his own theories. We learn about the relationship between illness and creativity, and about rec- ollection of events and the influence we all put on seem- ingly random aspects of a history. Maybe understanding these concepts will make us better neurologists.

And so I return to Dr Gooddy. What made him put such relevance on Proust magnum opus? If we are to examine his own published output there are clues. Not least an article published on Saturday 31 May 1958 in The Lancet entitled ‘Time and the Nervous system: the brain as a clock’. Within the elegantly written piece he introduces the concept of ‘temporal neurology’, arguing that the erst- while emphasis on neurology has been a dissection of spa- tial aspects of disease. Presenting theories on chronomet- ric mechanisms he uses examples of nervous and non- nervous physiological clocks which underpin our exis- tence. Gooddy takes neurology into the fourth dimension and uses the clock theories to explain why ‘when memory fails, we find a defect of recall and arrangement of time past’. And in that sentence I begin to understand what he means when recommending the novel to neurologists in training. Neurology is a temporal discipline, not just about locating lesions within the ‘space’ of the nervous system. Indeed chronobiology is now a burgeoning disci- pline. Gooddy predicts ‘we should be able to describe physiological chronometric mechanisms’. Whole confer- ences are now devoted to circadian rhythms, hox genes and neuroendocrine regulation of time.

In current times of molecular biology and the human genome does anyone have enough time to sit down and read novels as part of a medical curriculum? Perhaps Dr X would tell me that we can explain so much in terms of genetic regulation and spatial patterning that there is no longer a need for ‘amateur’ musings by latter-day philoso- phers. Science has negated philosophy; passing of time is another philosophical concept that has been explored and explained. I begin to argue that Proust tells us what it is to experience time, but instead I smile and let my mind wan- der and think back to a passage in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu which is able to elucidate in such elegant terms all those things which I have been battling to understand:

The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; remembrance of a par- ticular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

References

deBotton A. How Proust can change your life. Picador 1998. Gooddy W. Time and the Nervous System: the brain as a clock. Lancet, 1958:1(7031);1139-44. Kapur N. The ‘Petites Madeleines’ phenomenon in two amnesic patients: sudden recovery of forgotten memories. Brain, 1996:119;1401-4.

Levy SN. Proust's Realistic Treatment of Illness. The French Review, 1942:i;235-8. Lucchelli F, Muggia S, Spinnler H. The ‘Petites Madeleines’ phenome- non in two amnesic patients: sudden recovery of forgotten memories. Brain, 1995:118;167-83.

Pearn J, Gardner-Thorpe C. Jules Cotard (1840-1889). Neurology, 2002:58;1400-3. Sharma OP. Marcel Proust (1871-1922): reassessment of his asthma and other maladies. Eur Resp J 2000:15;958-60.

[ahmortentia]

MBTI as people i know

INFP The INFPs I know are probably the people who know the most about me? They can be judgy at times, but when they know it’s serious I trust them the most to not give me a look. Would I go to an INFP before my mother? probably. They’re really bad about eating regularly—sometimes they’ll send a text at seven pm that says “oh i forgot to eat?” Which makes me worried. They’re very sensitive to noise and surroundings, more so than other types. They tend to get really deep into something when they like it; they aren’t casual about their favorite things. They check in on people and really don’t like to burden others with their problems. At low points, they’ll wish someone would check in on them. Really good at focusing on one thing, but tends to struggle with five things at once. Negative side is that sometimes she gets so wrapped up in things/her feelings that she can’t really pay attention to her surroundings.

ISFP She’s kind of mysterious; I know bits of her past because we’ve been friends for a long time, but I wouldn’t know otherwise. She takes humor and throws it into her life; she tells great, hilarious stories, but seems too spaced out to really use that as a function. Sometimes she rambles off, almost lost in thought. She seems careful to not interrupt other people, she’s very polite. Sometimes, though, she can be really present in a conversation and it’s almost scary. We both find the same things funny; the most random words and phrases will pop into our heads and we’ll start laughing our asses off. Hufflepuff vibes, cares about other people but can be awkward in showing it. Doesn’t really know what’s going on, but is along for the ride. Never self-deprecating but never, ever arrogant. Kind.

INFJ The two INFJs I know really like mbti and I talk about it with them a lot? I don’t know if this is common within the type. The INFJ has strong moral code. Kind, cares about others. Very polite, seems to know what to say when. Has dreams and then also has an idea of how to get there; it’s not as strictly planned and straightforward, but it’s there. Somehow a soft voice (or maybe buttery?), regardless of what they’re saying. Has a good sense of the world, of how the world is; likes classifications, categories in the world. Unafraid. Negative side is that it’s hard to argue with INFJs because they have such a deeply rooted sense of self, and can take things very, very seriously.

ISFJ This is someone I’m placing here based on my semester’s observations. He loves telling stories about his life; when we talk, he’ll always be reminded of something that happened recently or even a long time ago. Gives advice in the form of a good story. Has a warmth about him, always smiles and waves. Gentle. He asks how everyone is doing, makes sure there’s a good group dynamic; will move and push things aside for people. Gives off huge Hufflepuff vibes, big suburban dad vibes. Will tell you how he feels and isn’t afraid to express his affection in words; an open book with all his life. Loves what he does and loves learning, isn’t afraid to be wrong and acknowledges when he doesn’t know. Downside is I fear people take advantage of his goodness.

INTP Gentle, but has his opinions. Stubborn as hell; likes to debate about abstract theories and things. Enjoys chasing the why. Private, takes a while to open up. Loves his planner but more for doodling and writing his thoughts than actually planning. Never sees his opinion as the way---is cautious to never assume he’s always right---but he’s right a lot of the time. It’s possible a tiny part of him knows it.  Patient, willing to let me ramble for years on end before saying his bit. It’s like he tastes his words, swishes them around in his mouth before saying them. He’s sweet.

INTJ Sees things in black and white with little to no grey areas. Sometimes corrects my jokes, which is…. Ouch. Takes things very seriously, but never seems to be driven by a passionate feeling. Loves learning, but isn’t interested in being a part of academia. A nice nerd. Makes you feel like you know him, but then he’ll tell you he has a dog and you never knew that. A really good person in the sense that he keeps to the rules and tries to do the best for everyone. Very private. Likes routine, sticks to similar outfits and the same colors. Jokes may not be laugh-out-loud like some people’s, but they’re always clever and smart. Enjoys indie music. Can be a little awkward or uncomfortable, especially if it’s a new situation. Not the best at thinking on his feet.

ISTP Always has a good time; laughs loudly with his friends. Thinks well on his feet--writes limericks and jokes on the spot as opposed to doodling. Never really plans things but is open to hanging out whenever, is laidback, doesn’t really try but manages to do well in everything. He’s somehow both put together and a total mess. Clever, witty. Can be a little bit of a showoff, apparently, but I’ve never seen that side of him. Makes a lot of self-deprecating jokes, but easily transitions into insult humor with his friends. He doesn’t really seem to change much around different people. Terrible at chess. Somewhat understanding, I think sometimes he can get stuck in his head a bit.

ISTJ I sit across from him on the couch and I ramble to him, he tells me stories in such a concise manner. He tends to focus on what people say and what really happens in the story. Rational, straightforward. He sees things more in black and white: this happened, this didn’t happen. Really good at debating and arguing things. I always lose. He’s sharp and so funny. He doesn’t mind so much making fun of people at their expense; in fact, most of his friends are the same way and they all have a good time. Unafraid to tell me when to shut the fuck up, especially when it’s needed. Clever, analytical, very good with numbers. Somewhat impatient.

ENFP I love her so much; energetic, balanced, she has a laugh that makes my heart flutter. When she finds things funny, she’s unafraid to show her feelings. She lives vigorously. She’s really funny; there’s a wit that lives in her. She goes by her feelings a lot. Knows there’s something in her gut and follows it through; gives sound advice because her gut is always, ALWAYS right. Sometimes doesn’t trust herself even though she really should. And when she goes back on herself, it turns out badly and she gets confused and insecure. Another ENFP I know is so gentle and warm, and very, very good at making and keeping connections. She’s soft, but in the best way: she loves and loves and you can feel the warmth spreading from her fingertips into the air. I worry she takes on too much; both are unskilled in the saying no department.

ESFP I used to know her relatively well as a kid, but we’ve split up since then. She’s so energetic and loud. The two words that are most apt are social butterfly: she flutters from person to person, bright and passionate, dragging everyone along to the next adventure. She can’t control her excitement--she stands up when she gets excited. She offers to drive her friends places, especially if they don’t have a car (it’s on the way or she’s got time). Popular, well-liked, always smiling. Will walk up to someone she hasn’t seen in years, or maybe someone she barely knows, and has this skill of making them feel known. Her energy, sometimes, can be too much, though.

ENFJ She feels things deeply. Looks out for everyone in a situation. Makes lots of jokes to help others feel comfortable, or to make herself feel more comfortable (usually self-deprecating jokes). Good at understanding what you say even when you speak gibberish. Bold. Talks with everyone, and is very cool. Chill. Doesn’t really change drastically in different environments; she is who she is. Smart, especially in a practical sense: also has a real gut intuition and just Knows what’s right emotionally. Decisive, trusts her feelings and sticks to them. Stands up for what she believes is right—she makes me proud to be her friend. Negative side is that sometimes she feels like the way she sees things is the only way; if something is obvious, then it should be obvious to everyone.

ESFJ Another one of my closest friends. Goes on coffee runs for people, is willing to go way out of her way to get people home safe. Knows what she wants and gets it. Is unafraid of talking to people, asking for help, or even texting people she doesn’t know. The glue of a group, consistently checks in. Well known throughout, but doesn’t strive to make her name known; it’s just who she is. Very popular, good-hearted. She enjoys calling and FaceTiming people—what more can I say about that extroversion? Spreads love and joy wherever she can. Negative side is that she can get absorbed in her feelings and sometimes she doesn’t see how she’s affecting other people with what she’s saying. 

ENTP So, so cocky. The one person I know of this type is someone I’ve placed here myself. Sharp, cutting…Biting sense of humor that makes the room come alive but never feels bitter. Tends to mock the people he likes the most. Very blunt: doesn’t dwell on the past but thinks about what he can do next. Can’t really listen for the sake of listening, he needs a purpose. Enjoys attention. Thinks well on his feet but terrible at planning; leaves things vague and doesn’t feel specifics are necessary. Tendency to make observations and translate them into analysis, but without any feeling or personal input involved. Intimidating. Maybe, maybe cares under 78 layers of doesn’t give a fuck; will never say how he feels.

ENTJ She never understands my complaints because there’s always a simple solution: just do x, y, z. She’s supportive, but not in a cheerleader way. She’s quick, good at getting things done; smart and tries hard even when she makes it seem like she doesn’t care. She sticks up for her friends and isn’t afraid to call someone out on their bullshit to their face. Uses reason and logic to get her way; great at debating and arguing, and seems to always hold herself together even when she jokes about a mental breakdown she had earlier. Has a nice laugh and always has interesting facts in her head. Knows her shit about music. She jokingly adopts a holier-than-thou attitude about some things, but everyone knows it isn’t to be taken seriously (and if you don’t know that, then you definitely aren’t friends with her). She can do impulsive things, or get dragged into impulsive things. Can think she’s always in the right and that other people are wrong.

ESTP Electric. I’ve never known her up close, so I can’t say much, but she has this energy that makes you look up when she enters a room. Knows how to have a good time. Can be a bit cutting or rude, especially to people she doesn’t know; doesn’t really care about who someone is, she has to say what she thinks is right. You primarily have to earn her respect. She’s the type who will walk up to a stranger to compliment their shirt. Enjoys being in the spotlight to the point that the spotlight naturally rests on her, it’s attached to her. Seems absolutely fearless, even though she may have doubts inside. Has taken her identity and made it into a badge of honor. Doesn’t plan things herself, but falls off that metaphorical cliff and lands in a catlike way, defying gravity. She maneuvers life having perfected improvisation.

ESTJ She, like the ISTJ, thinks so logically. But there’s something else to it: whereas the ISTJ is more independent and sticks to their own, the ESTJ wants to go-go-go. Always has a plan or an idea in her head, always wants to go out and do things, regardless of what. Loves making plans almost as much as I do. She sticks to her facts and has a tendency to forget feelings in the equation. She thinks in such a linear manner, going from A to B to C. Thorough. Bright, cheery, and loves her everyday. Negative side is that she latches onto facts and outside opinion wherever she can: instagram likes, the people who respond to her texts, her reputation according to others. She doesn’t consider how she should feel, especially internally.

[littleredroseonthevalley]

Why the Brian Thing is STILL Lousy Writing

Since I cannot seem to breathe on this site without receiving a truckload of anon hatemail calling me racist, sexist and/or a pedophile, I am going to retrace my argument about Brian Crandall using as a guideline the only person with balls enough to question me using their own blog, and also the more tasteful complaint, @prinxess-with-no-crown.

I am going to start by letting them speak for themselves.

First, I would like to point out I used the word ‘lousy’, not ‘lazy’. It is a distinction that matters to me, because lazy means they have not tried, and lousy means they did try but made a mess of themselves.

PB is not ignorant, nor they are indulgent. This can be attested by the times they get things right. They just poo-poo-ed HSS, especially the villainous aspect.

However, I am attributing this slight to a language barrier or a autocorrector thing, so no harm, no foul.

Now, to the heart of the argument, indeed there are people who apologize but do not mean what they said. Hell, I do it all the time. This is not one of these cases, and I have two arguments to prove it.

In narrative, there are rules. Every self-respecting author must know those rules, even when subverting them. An important one is called self-referencing, it means that your work must be constantly reminding the audience, and itself, of events that came before. Like actual human beings, characters make decisions based on memories and feelings that the writer established for them in various points of the story.

If you want to portray a deceiving, lying character, you need not only to make him lie but also make all other characters acknowledge he lied. There is no point in HSS 3 that the MC or Caleb wonder, ‘oh, gee, Brian said he’d change, but it seems it’s too hard for him’.

Before I present my second argument, I would like to point out I hold contempt by the recent surge in media of harrassment portrayals. I find them distasteful, as an attempt to cash into other people’s tragedies and feelings.

It is not educational. If you want to educate your child or your office underlings, you talk to them, then you punish them severely if they step out of line, and then you hold the figurative severed head in display so all others fear the crap out of you and what you are capable of should they step out of line.

What you don’t do is show how the (fictional, at that) victims feel so very hurt. They know that. They don’t care about that. In fact, this whole exercise would be pretty much redundant if the victim did not feel pain, as a power move is meaningless if the opressed do not cry.

Observing the finished work, I cannot help but think that, while conceiving HSS 3, the writers looked at the story and thought it needed more flavour, a social message. From all currently debated subjects, the only one that was a sure-fire, that would not start a Tumblr war over it, was sexual harrassment.

(That turned out to not be true, it seems, eh?)

However, the story they set did not allow for any male character to be turned into an abuser: all boys were a LI or the LI of a LI. There was Max, but he had already been giving too much of screen time and characterization by the A Plot.

And so, they looked at Brian, saw that no-one cared for the Ron Weasley knockout very much, and pulled a Deus Ex Machina on him, making him from repentant to unrepentant, from forgiven and forgot to Public Enemy.

To make matters worse, you compensate the loss of a repentant character making a horribly hushed redemption arc with Zoe, saying that she was the victim of the relationship with Brian. When she was the one who proposed cheating on him. Within hearing distance of him. With the guy that worked up his inferiority complex the most. Right after a (choice-dependant) shameful defeat, mostly due to himself.

And PB wants me to buy this!

To me, THIS is lousy.

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san

Hey, remember how, among my myriad complaints about Blend-S, I wished it had taken the opportunity to make some commentary on customer service work and maybe also “face”/public persona, and that I’d like to see another show that doesn’t suck give it a try?  I might have found such a show.

And that means it’s time again for Paul Is Weeaboo Trash!

Today’s episode: Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san (2018)

Episodes watched: 3

Skull-Face Bookseller Honda-san is a series of office-comedy-like shorts set in a bookstore.  Our main character, Honda, is… well… a skeleton, and his co-workers are fleshy humans wearing various masks and helmets.  Each episode is about 11 minutes total, and contains at least two shorts about some aspect of working in a bookstore.

It’s based on a manga (which I haven’t read), and rather than adapting to a different medium’s conventions, it seems like they just sort of… animated the manga?  The art style is something I've seen more often in manga than anime in the past, with characters who are more realistically-proportioned and faces more detailed than what most people often think of when they think of “anime” art styles.  Almost all of the characters whose faces we see are customers, while the employees, being masked, uniformly have no facial expressions, and express themselves in gestures and common media tropes found in both Japanese and American drawn media, like torrential tears and nervous sweat drops.  The emotional range is mostly along an axis from friendliness to exasperation — in other words, how retail workers behave in front of customers vs. away from them.  The masks (and Honda’s skull) lend themselves to simpler, cheaper animation choices, since it lets them avoid working on facial expressions and lip movements.  And boy is this show simple and cheap: customers have looping mouth movements with no attempt to match the dialogue, the whole show has very little movement overall of any kind, and characters’ movements are clearly made by translating or rotating a still image of the character through a field of other layered objects.

It occurred to me, though, almost immediately on seeing the masked employees that they might not just be part of the simple animation but be a way to literally portray the concept of face here.  Although there isn’t a relationship between different masks and different public persona (at least not that I noticed, and to be fair, I can be remarkably dense), it’s not a huge leap to think that the choice to have them wearing masks at all is more than just a "lol that's random" thing.  Not a huge jump from literally disguising themselves while working to figuratively doing so.  And Honda being a skeleton specifically seems like it might be symbolic, because he certainly seems more burnt-out (”dead tired”? I don’t think that idiom translates) than the others.  Or maybe I’m reading into it what I was hoping for, and the store staff’s masks are a cheap and lighthearted attempt to make the characters distinguishable without having to deal with designing an entire staff of unique characters, and/or to anonymize real people — the show and the manga are based on the author’s actual experiences at an actual bookstore, as one of the shorts in ep. 2 points out.  Anyway, back to the point about face, so far at least, everything has taken place at work, and we have not gotten to know anyone’s private persona, so the contrast between who you are in and out of work is not really fleshed out.  (Is that phrase insensitive to skeletons?)  Oh well.

But I’ll summarize what has gone on so far.  The first episode consists of two shorts about the target audience of this blog: weeaboo trash.  The store experiences an influx of foreign tourists, mostly women, looking quite enthusiastically for BL and, ahem, adult content that the store sells but which Honda is very uncomfortable providing.  As weeaboo trash, and just as people, we the viewers have probably agonized as customers about others judging our taste in things, but we see it here from the other side: the seller is embarrassed about the topic the customer has brought up, even though it’s a product close enough to “acceptable” for the store to carry it, and Honda is put on the spot completely when asked to make BL recommendations by the bold foreigners.   Viewers with a little knowledge of Japan, or even just common stereotypes of it, will probably note from the beginning the contrast of Westerners being so expressive compared to Honda’s Japanese expectations, but it goes beyond just different cultures’ ideas of acceptable expressiveness, to the more specific social status and internal practices of nerd culture there vs. here. 

The second episode consists almost entirely of a single short on issues with stocking the store.  Deliveries are late or early or incomplete, employees with theoretically separate responsibilities overlap and wonder where to sort certain products, and boxes of books are always heavier than you think, something that has brought me no small amount of annoyance every time I’ve moved.  It’s a look behind the scenes, as it were, at the parts of retail we who don’t work in it don’t really think about.  It delivers well on the kinds of real-life "oh great, now what?" work situations that almost feel like deliberate punchlines.

The third again has two longer shorts.  The first is about a visit from representatives of Kadokawa, who are of course also masked.  The Kadokawa salespeople are there to present promotional materials and find out how their titles are selling, and we see some more distinction of different employees’ personalities here as they deal differently with the salespeople’s friendly unhelpfulness, especially Honda's extreme conflict-aversion.  The second short returns to the theme of the first episode, dealing with notable and unusual customer requests for recommendations.

And that’s it so far.  Not much to dive into for notably good or bad points like I usually do.  It’s just a fun show that tells real-life stories pretty well.  Check it out it you like that kind of thing.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

—–

Revised W/A/S Scores: 5 / 1? IDK / 5

Weeb: Mainly the show is a series of personal anecdotes requiring little background besides “there are such things as bookstores”.  But the show uses very Japanese tropes to emphasize lines and depict emotion, and contains some references (constant use of slightly-censored versions of real manga titles, for example) that some viewers won’t get, so it may come off as bizarre to people not familiar with anime/manga comedy tropes.

Ass: There is some discussion of 18+ manga in the first episode, but it’s not a recurring topic and no characters are sexualized at all.  It’s just not that kind of show.

Shit (writing): I find it uncomfortable to try to critique anything about the writing, since it’s based on a series of personal anecdotes about the author’s actual life.  It’s clear and amusing, and I think the author is a good storyteller, although the explanatory asides sometimes go on too long and feel like they could’ve been better integrated into dialogue.

Shit (other): I was surprised to see something that looks like this.  The characters and backgrounds remain consistent, and the same simple animation choices are made throughout, which makes it look like just an unconventional style rather than incompetence or cheapness per se.  But it still gives off a general impression of being an above-average artist’s homemade pet project, maybe even something from the Flash era, rather than a professional production.  Indeed, it turns out the studio that made it started out working in Flash.

Content Warning: None.

—–

Stray Observations:

- Kadokawa, whose subsidiary Media Factory published the original manga, doesn’t come off looking great in here.  Maybe they just have a sense of humor about themselves, like how shows broadcast on FOX here in the US keep making fun of FOX and related companies.

[matchafrican446]

Orthodox Jewish Dating Sites

Orthodox Jewish Dating Websites

Free Jewish Dating Sites

Brooke, 30, an Orthodox woman divorced for six years, wants a meaningful relationship that will lead to marriage, but that is proving to be a challenge. She has tried matchmakers, popular in her circle, but most of them don’t give thought to the matches, ignoring her personal qualities and tastes. She’s tried Jewish dating sites too. But, she finds them “free for all and creepy.” Many of the men want to date casually, or just hook up. Some even create fake profiles.

Mazaltov.org is where marriage minded Jewish singles come to find true love. Our unique approach to creating a Jewish dating site has resulted in many success stories. We blend cutting-edge technology with our unique human touch, to create an online community like no other Jewish dating site. 3 reasons to choose Jewish dating sites. Here are 3 reasons to choose Mingle2 Jewish dating site: 😉 Secure verification: All members are personally confirmed by our staff to prove they are real. We provide you with real potential partners that are here for the same reasons as you. 😉 Quick to register: Registering an account and creating a.

In 2018, being Orthodox no longer offers the security of ongoing community support, and for single millennials, finding a partner is a solitary pursuit. While Jewish communities still value marriage and family above all, the burden of coupling falls on the singles.Yossi, 32, and Shira Teichman, 31, a married Orthodox couple from Los Angeles have drawn on their life experiences to create a technological solution to this dilemma. Together with life coach Shiffy,Lichtenstein, they are the co-creators of forJe a dating app for Jewish singles, like Brooke, who are seeking long-term relationships.

Chaim Orzel, 27, who grew up in a “very Orthodox home” and now describes himself as “Conservadox”, is ready to give the new app a try. He bemoans the shallowness of dating sites that promote pretty profiles and impressive job titles over internal gifts. “The problem is that it’s making marriage a transactional experience. What happens if a guy loses his job, or he has a stroke, heaven forbid? Free unpaid dating sites. External things won’t keep a marriage together.”

The Teichmans share this view. “We both have PHDs in dating,” says Shira wearily, in a telephone interview with this reporter. Before meeting one another in 2014, she says: “We had gone to all the matchmakers and the singles events. We were meeting a multitude of people, but nothing was working.” Yossi recalls that most dating coaches just gave advice on appearances.

The disappointment led Shira, who has an MA in education, to study with experts such as Leonard Carr, a psychologist who runs growth courses on relationships and “personal mastery” (https://www.leonardcarr.com/index.html), hoping to better understand herself. “I wanted to understand what drives me, what holds me back. Once I started understanding myself, I realized my dating was changing already. I was in a more powerful position to find the right partner.”

Shira decided to share this new sense of power and began running dating workshops called “Breakthrough Dating.” “Being able to develop a connection is a very tangible skill,” she explains. While Shira says many millennials will go on a date, not feel “a spark”, and then end the budding relationship, she believes they need to learn a process she calls “the anatomy of building a relationship.”

Positive feedback followed the early events. Out of 40 individuals at one of her first events, four ended up getting married. So, when Yossi entered the picture, the workshops became a shared passion. After each event, the couple would distribute surveys, later reviewed by psychologist Rabbi David Pelcovitz, chair of education and psychology at Yeshiva University.

Statistics in hand, a year and a half ago, the couple began serious work on forJe. Yossi worked with a team of other programmers to code what he calls “the first dating app to use Artificial Intelligence.” To screen out fraudsters, the app requires users to scan their drivers’ license. That information is then compared to the information provided from Facebook or Google when the user makes a profile. Once the app is satisfied that the individual is not a scammer, personal information is deleted and never shared, Yossi says.

The need for such a high level of user safety is the result of an increase in catfishing, or the act of luring someone into a relationship based on a false online persona. Since 2005, numerous websites like romancescams.org and Facebook forums have been created to help victims of these crimes. In the last six months of 2014 alone, the FBI reported that 82 million dollars of money was stolen through such scams, as reported by the podcast Criminal.

Ben Rabizadeh, the CEO of JWed, a Jewish dating site in which over 50% of users are Orthodox, said that his site faces threats from these international scammers. Fraudsters create fake profiles, get into an online relationship, and then ask for money. “We screen out a large majority of fraudulent profiles during initial signup; but occasionally something slips through and in those cases, we promptly respond to complaints and remove users who are not eligible to join JWed.”

ForJe’s decision to increase security is also a response to locals who lie about their marital status on Jewish dating sites. Rabizadeh says he is shocked to hear of religious married men saying they are single to pursue single women. “This has never come up except for the rare circumstance where a couple is separated and not yet legally divorced.”

But women interviewed for this article say it does happen. Brooke describes her worst experience – a man who created four different profiles and even changed the cadence of his voice when speaking on the phone as the various personas. “He also had a wife and girlfriend,” she added. “There are men who are married or in relationships and lie about their status,” says Jackie, 32, who acknowledges that she finds dating sites helpful, despite the perils.

ForJe is taking these reports seriously. And the next step in creating a profile is also aimed at screening out fraudsters. Users must answer a lengthy series of multiple choice questions. The type of questions reflects the Teichmans’ interest in self-knowledge and include probing queries such as “If you won a large sum of money, how would you use it?” and “How do you determine if you’ve had a good week?” The list takes a while to get through, but the time required has an objective, according to Yossi. “We want to weed out people that are just looking for hook-ups,” he says emphatically.

As users answer more questions and interact with the app, it is programmed to get to know their unique selves – at least as well as a machine can ‘know’ a human. Every day, users are presented with up to three matches. The low number of potentials is also there to encourage committed dating. There is no opportunity for rapidly judging the attractiveness of scores of photographs, a practice associated with other apps.“

Most dating apps today are not really dating apps. They are social media platforms and have all the features Facebook does. They just want people to be addicted and stay in. We aren’t interested in that. We are interested in you finding compatible matches.”But will singles trust a machine to set them up? Girls dating app.

Orthodox Jewish Dating Websites

Jackie, who describes herself as Jewishly “traditional”, says she would give the concept a try. “Seems like anything would be better than the matchmakers at Saw You at Sinai,” she says, naming a popular Orthodox site which uses remote matchmakers to set users up. “Machines aren’t focused on what they get out of it, so that would probably be more accurate matching,” agrees Brooke, referring to matchmakers in general.

The app is potentially great news, according to Rabbi Mark Wildes, an Orthodox rabbi who founded and directs the Manhattan Jewish Experience, an organization where millennial men and women in their 20s and 30s can explore Jewish life and meet new people. “Any kind of technology that allows people to be more honest will be helpful to more serious-minded daters.” he says. However, he cautions that young people overuse technology for dating – breaking up over text and not giving shy people a chance. “People are not as fast as computers,” he says.

Another challenge he has observed is that millennials have lost their faith in marriage. When it comes to the challenges faced by Orthodox singles, Rabbi Wildes thinks the answer may lie in grassroots matchmaking. “It should be a mandate for every young couple in the first 24 months of their marriage to fix people up. We need to increase the pool of matchmakers. Feeling a little gratitude that you found that special someone? Pay it back.”

But while Jewish singles wait for their married friends to set them up, they are finding ways to empower themselves. Signing up for an artificially intelligent matchmaker is one way to do that.

Another form of empowerment is taking a chance on love, says Orzel. He believes the Orthodox single crisis can be solved by a collective change in attitude. “In Hebrew ahava means love, the root word, hav in Hebrew is to give. So, to love someone, you must give to that person. Without giving, there is no love. In our dating life today, there is no concept of unconditional love.”

Free Jewish Dating Sites

Free iranian dating site. Suzanne Selengut writes feature stories about global Jewish issues and the arts. She is based in New York City.

[ruffoverthinksthings]

Polyamory Core 4 for ship meme?

1.Whois the most affectionate?:

Carlos.

Whilethe others have their moments of playful flirtations and teasing,Carlos is the one who does most of the clinging, the hugging, thetackling, the glomping, and snuggling.

2.Bigspoon/Little spoon?:

BigSpoons: Mal and Jay.

LittleSpoons: Carlos and Evie.

There’sa system, where the former two were frequently known as the group’s“protectors” whenever things got physical, and the latter two areall too happy to be in someone’s big, powerful arms, safely intheir grasp and protected from threats both real and imagined.

3.Mostcommon argument?:

Howto use their “all-in date night” about once or twice a month, ifthe stars align.

Theseare four very different people, of which they have very differenttastes and hobbies, and even something as neutral as dinner or amovie can get pretty heated, with them arguing over what sort ofcuisine to have together (fusions are considered a category all ontheir own, with Evie’s discerning tastes), what film to see, or ifthey shouldn’t try something completely different altogether, likegoing in a four-team battle at the local water park, and decimatingthe competition.

Itdoesn’t really help that, because of Auradon’s culture, there’sQUITE a lot of ways to spend your time leisurely if you have themoney and/or the connections, of which they have both.

4.Favoritenon-sexual activity?:

Commentingon how freaking weird and awful Auradon can be, either as complainingand stress relief, or just reflecting and observing their world andhow so many people can be so blind to how terrible it is, havingnever had their unique perspective.

5.Whois most likely to carry the other?:

Maland Jay.

Bothare the stronger of the two, there is no way in hell Evie will bedoing any sort of hard physical labour unless it was absolutely lifeor death, and Carlos is more agility and intelligence than strengthand endurance.

6.Whatis their favorite feature of their partner’s?:

Mal’seyes, brilliant like emeralds, glimmering with mischief, burning withanger, warm with love.

Evie’shair, flowing like a deep blue sea, soft as silk, always smellinglike the finest of flowers.

Jay’smuscular physique, useful for heavy lifting, having someone to getaround difficult to reach places, and for being held and carriedaround when either you don’t want to move, or the world feels tooheavy on your shoulders.

Carlos’hands, agile, skilled, well-worn with callouses, as capable of makingbrilliant machines from a spark of genius, as they are comforting andcaring for a weary soul, and other things better off not mentionedpublicly.

7.What’sthe first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings forthe other?:

How they hang out with each other and either casually date with one or two, or just be explicitly “friends” for that outing. It’s difficult to reconcile their growing feelings for each other given that Auradon has a very “pick one” culture, which I expound on at the end.

8.Nicknames?& if so, how did they originate?:

“LittlestSpace Heater.” After Mal starts to develop her dragon traits evenfurther from all the residual magic she is now exposed to, she startsproducing a constant, supernatural heat in her chest. For VKs whofeel the cold more strongly than others, it’s an extra lovelyfeature which makes Mal the center of their cuddle piles most nights,excluding summer.

“YourHighness.” To Evie, for obvious reasons.

“Mr.Magic Hands.” Jay, for his ability to make things appear anddisappear like magic with a sleight of his hands, with or withoutsleeves, along with his well known skills in applying that in asexual sense.

“Doctor”or just “Doc.” Used with Carlos as either teasing orencouragement during his college years when he was still working onhis undergraduate, his masters, and finally, his doctorate.

9.Whoworries the most?:

Carlos.

Asthe resident overthinker and “cosmic chewtoy” he’s more thanaware of all the various things and factors that could go wrong andmake life suck hard. Having been powereless to do much ofanything about them when they do actually come contributes to hisanxiety.

10.Whoremembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant?:

Carlos.

He’sa stickler for details and memory, having needing to keep a runningtab of everything in his mind due to the lack of papers and propermeans to document on the Isle—that his notes also tend to befrequently stolen out of spite or used for tinder really helpeddevelop his excellent memory.

11.Whotops?:

Mal,Evie, and Jay, though their switch. Carlos never does, though therewere some rare occasions where they do try and have him take thelead.

12.Whoinitiates kisses?:

Everyoneat some point, though the most shameless and constant are Jay andEvie, due to being flirts and no strangers to just going ahead andkissing someone for fun.

Malis reluctant to show affection still, Carlos prefers hugs and moreextensive physical contact than just lips-to-lips.

13.Whoreaches for the other’s hand first?:

Malin confidence, when they march forward without a care.

Eviein style, when her dazzling outfit is accentuated by the carefullycoordinated fashions of her companions.

Jayin coercion, when he pulls them off to some grand misadventure orinforms them that they’ve been roped into it without theirknowledge nor consent.

Carlosfor comfort, when he needs to feel that someone’s right therebeside him.

14.Whokisses the hardest?:

Jay.

Asa combination of physical strength, his usual enthusiasm, and thefact that boys on the Isle were expected to be macho men, he knowshow to steal anyone’s breath away with his lips.

15.Whowakes up first?:

Jay,Carlos, Mal, then Evie.

Respectively,“the first thief gets the loot,” “it’s time to get on thoseideas that have stewed overnight,” “gotta get to doingsomething,” and “need all eight-ten hours of beauty sleep.”

16.Whowants to stay in bed just a little longer?:

Evie.

Nowthat she has a proper bed as a guarantee, not a rare luxury, she isloathe to leave it by choice.

17.Whosays I love you first?:

Carlos.

Malhas trouble saying it, Evie’s concerned about the optics of it allhere in Auradon, and Jay has trouble actually saying the wordsdespite being quite the flirt, as it was “never a serious,committed thing.”

18.Wholeaves little notes in the other’s one lunch? (Bonus: what does itusually say?):

Maland Evie, as a consequence of the ones doing most of the cooking inthe relationship. Mal specializes in baked goods, Evie does moreday-to-day meal cooking along with special diets.

ByEvie are usually teasing witticisms.

ToMal: “Have a sweet and salty treat, just like you.”

ToJay: “Rich, dark, and smooth as silk, just how you like it~”

ToCarlos: “Sweet kisses for my sweetheart~”

ByMal are usually complaints and reminders, oftentimespassive-aggressive.

ToEvie: “I spent almost as much time making this as you did in thebathroom this morning, hope it pleases tastes as good as how late youmade me.”

ToJay: “Have one more, since you stole the six others from the tray,you greedy bastard.”

ToCarlos: “I lovingly mixed this by hand, because you stole thefucking blender again, you little shit.”

19.Whotells their family/friends about their relationship first?:

Maldue to the ease with which she can tell Maleficent that, trapped inher terrarium still and all.

20.Whatdo their family/friends think of their relationship?:

Maleficentthinks it’s even worse than when she fell for Ben. “Oh, at leastthere was just ONE tragic, easily abused weak point, but now you’vegot three!”

EvilQueen is quite disappointed Evie would sully her perfect reputationeven more than she already has by (publicly) engaging is suchscandalous “affairs.” “Evie, darling, I realize that royaltycannot be expected to be as perfect as they appear to the masses, butwe have a system about this, a certain measure of discretion andsecrecy.”

Cruellais really more pissed off by the fact that she assumes that she haslost her son and her personal servant a second time, and likely has astrong feeling of disdain for the other three for “leashing him.”It likely doesn’t register to her mind that a relationship couldever be mutually beneficial or purely for love.

Jafaris also disappointed. “People, my boy, I have always told you thatpeople will leave you, people will stab you in the back, people willsteal everything you own, your gold, your power, your influence—theonly three things that DO matter.”

21.Whois more likely to start dancing with the other?:

Jayand Evie.

Mallikes to maintain her cool persona as the “responsible” one ofthe team, Carlos is nervous about these things unless the dancehappens to involve dogs in some way.

22.Whocooks more/who is better at cooking?:

Asmentioned above, Mal and Evie, as a combination of either learninghow to combine and use many cooking-like processes for magic, or justbeing an excellent chemist who also had a lifetime’s worth ofdomestic training.

Jayand Carlos are serviceable in the kitchen, but Jay’s more likely toknow how to fry up eggs, pancakes (both regular flour andbanana-based), and bacon than pretty much anything else, and Carlosis more likely to experiment and use the kitchen tools for everythingbut cooking, and relies very heavily on “one-stepappliances” like waffle irons, food processors, and blenders to domost of the actual food preparation.

Inshort, with the boys, you’re either going to get a greasy,protein-packed meal with a side of toast and stupidly strong coffee,or a smoothie, or a mechanically tossed salad, or other rawingredient rich dish like ice cream—again, machine made.

23.Whocomes up with cheesy pick up lines?:

Carlos.

Malhas been the victim of cheesy, terrible one-liners from people she’sone-upped shortly after, Evie thinks herself beyond the lowest levelof Wit when there are much higher levels to aspire to, and Jay comesclose, but not quite.

24.Whowhispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear duringinappropriate times?:

Jayand Evie.

Shamelessflirts, both before and after the relationship, and the VKs have kepta LOT of habits from their time on the Isle.

25.Whoneeds more assurance?:

Carlosand Mal.

Theformer never had security, the latter was always told that she wasnever good enough.

26.Whatwould be their theme song?:

“TheKids Aren’t Alright” by Fall Out Boy.

Andin the endI'd do it all againI think you're my bestfriendDon't you know that the kids aren't al-, kids aren'talrightI'll be yoursWhen it rains it poursStaythirsty like beforeDon't you know that the kids aren't al-,kids aren't alright

Thishas been a tough life for all of them, to say the least. 16 to 15years of pure suffering, all because they were born to the wrongpeople, and because the world they lived in painted things in such astrict, black-and-white, “Good” and “Evil” way.

They’restill suffering. Life still isn’t perfect. Things could still getbetter in Auradon, and WAY better.

Butif they had a choice to live a “good” life at the cost of nevermeeting, they’d turn around immediately.

27.Whowould sing to their child back to sleep?:

Maland Evie having the best singing voices, as stereotypical as that is.

Malreally enjoys giving their kids a chance at a normal childhood seeingas Maleficent never did that or the many other things mother shouldbe showing their kids, Evie has been trained from a very young age tobe the perfect mother.

Jayis really more for physical playtime like upsy-daisy and horseyrides, and Carlos is all about creative and constructive play likecolouring, building PLUCKO block creations, and talking about how theinternals of their toys work.

28.Whatdo they do when they’re away from each other?:

Asalways, their respective jobs, hobbies, and social lives. I’vediscussed this so many times I really don’t want to regurgitatethat all over again.

29.oneheadcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart:

HowAuradon first reacts to it.

They’rea very conservative country who have very much accepted the idea thatthere’s only to be one love for one person each, andwhile they HAVE started to bend the rules towards same-sex couplings(dramatic age differences have historically never been an issue, nowthat new morals were instated), a polyamorous arrangement was justtoo much for them.

“Yes,but who will you pick in the end?” many a well-meaning associatehad asked.

“Allof them,” they replied.

“Butyou can’t do that! You HAVE to choose just one!”

“Butwhy can’t I choose all of them?”

“Becausethat’s not how we do things here in Auradon!”

30.oneheadcanon about this OTP that mends it:

They mope about it. They reflect.They take into consideration that Auradon will not agree nor acceptto what they’re doing.

Then they decide to just do itanyway.

“We’re VK, we never belongedhere in the first place, nor will they ever completely accept us forwho we are, what we do, what we want out of life. What’s one morething that’ll piss them off…?” Mal says, summing up theirthoughts.